Thoughts on the SSPX Excommunication?

[TheBrokenEar]

@Tommy

I don’t believe we can be both “excommunicated” yet “faithful” at the same same time. One contradicts the other.

That’s correct. But an excommunication can be objectively unjust and invalid.

@Tommy

That in itself has lost 2 of the 4 pillars of the Church (it looses the “One” and “Apostolic” aspects).

The Church is a society, an ordered whole engaged in a shared activity. This activity is the essential unity of the Church: it’s the profession of Faith. The role of the Holy Father is principally to make manifest the object of our Faith. He guarantees the unity of the Church chiefly by making manifest the object of our Faith, by formulating the Creed or Symbol.

This is what St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa (II-II, Q.1, art. 10):

I answer that, as stated above (Objection 1), a new edition of the symbol becomes necessary in order to set aside the errors that may arise. Consequently to publish a new edition of the symbol belongs to that authority which is empowered to decide matters of faith finally, so that they may be held by all with unshaken faith. Now this belongs to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, “to whom the more important and more difficult questions that arise in the Church are referred,” as stated in the Decretals [Dist. xvii, Can. 5. Hence our Lord said to Peter whom he made Sovereign Pontiff (Luke 22:32): “I have prayed for thee,” Peter, “that thy faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.” The reason of this is that there should be but one faith of the whole Church, according to 1 Corinthians 1:10: “That you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you”: and this could not be secured unless any question of faith that may arise be decided by him who presides over the whole Church, so that the whole Church may hold firmly to his decision. Consequently it belongs to the sole authority of the Sovereign Pontiff to publish a new edition of the symbol, as do all other matters which concern the whole Church, such as to convoke a general council and so forth.

But what are Catholics to do when the Monarch of the Church no longer fulfills his role? When he teaches a different doctrine? All they can do is hold on to the Faith, and do whatever is in their power to continue in that same Faith.

@Tommy

However, if I were to receive personal advice from the Church’s clergy (and hierarchy) that what I’ve been misled into is schism and excommunicated myself from, this would probably be a very good time for myself to re-evaluate.

I do re-evaluate. Constantly. As best I can.

Catholic obedience and Faith is not a blind one. We will be held responsible if we obey commands we should have known were evil.

[Tommy]

@TheBrokenEar

That’s correct. But an excommunication can be objectively unjust and invalid.

The Excommunication is null/void ONLY when it is invalid due to an “intrinsic or essential defect,” such as lack of jurisdiction, manifestly incorrect motives, or essential defects in form.

With SSPX, the excommunications are within jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, manifests correct motives (to bring back into the Fold the one who has been excommunicated – thus the motive for excommunication is not punitive but rather charity), and is without defects in it’s Form. There are no other exceptions. And we can’t create new definitions or terms of defects.

@TheBrokenEar

The Church is a society, an ordered whole engaged in a shared activity. This activity is the essential unity of the Church: it’s the profession of Faith.

The profession of faith (such as the Nicene Creed or Apostles Creed) and it’s interpretation lies with the authority of the Catholic Church – just as is with interpretation of Sacred Scripture. The meanings within the Profession of Faith is not subjective.

And “shared activity” is NOT the essential “unity of the Church” or it’s members. This is incorrect. The Catholic Church shares activity with pagans and atheists, but that doesn’t mean we are all fully united. We lack the “Oneness”, and the PERFECT BOND OF UNITY.

1 Corinthians 1:10: Paul urges believers to agree with one another, let there be no divisions, and be perfectly united in mind and thought.

Colossians 3:14: Paul calls love the “perfect bond of unity” that holds everything together in harmony.

The Church just isn’t simply a “society”. That’s only part of what it is. We hear the same statements from protestants, and other man-created organizations who wish to justify their motives and ego. The Catholic Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. We share a society with the world we live, and with secularism. But we don’t have to be double-minded and serve two masters.

Isolating the “society” from all other aspects of the Church is equivalent to Cafeteria Christianity. We don’t have the authority to pick and choose what terms our salvation is based upon. No human has that authority. Not even our Blessed Mother.

@TheBrokenEar

We will be held responsible if we obey commands we should have known were evil.

And finally, this I again encourage you to re-evaluate the errors of SSPX and their determination to separate you/others from the Catholic Church, being divided. The work of the Evil One is to divide. We have been made known, very clearly, the consequences of division in/from the Church. Schism is division. But those who have fallen into error of SSPX by the preaching and misleading of others isn’t something we must personally live with eternally. I, too, have been a victim of schism many-many years ago. And schism rebounds in many colors, forms, and opportunities.

[TheBrokenEar]

@Tommy

Paul calls love the “perfect bond of unity”

The unity of the Church is not the unity of those who have Charity, and who are united by love. Of course, the essential unity of the Church should lead to a unity of love, of Charity. But persons living in sin can still be members of the Church, of the body of Christ.

What unites the Church is the common profession of Faith - that’s the shared, social activity that constitutes the Church. And this is an activity that we do not share with those who do not keep the Faith whole and entire.

I would be happy to discuss this further in a separate thread.

[Tommy]

@TheBrokenEar

The unity of the Church is not the unity of those who have Charity, and who are united by love. Of course, the essential unity of the Church should lead to a unity of love, of Charity. But persons living in sin can still be members of the Church, of the body of Christ.

What unites the Church is the common profession of Faith - that’s the shared, social activity that constitutes the Church. And this is an activity that we do not share with those who do not keep the Faith whole and entire.

Peace be with you.

[TheBrokenEar]

@TheBrokenEar

The unity of the Church is not the unity of those who have Charity, and who are united by love. Of course, the essential unity of the Church should lead to a unity of love, of Charity. But persons living in sin can still be members of the Church, of the body of Christ.

What unites the Church is the common profession of Faith - that’s the shared, social activity that constitutes the Church. And this is an activity that we do not share with those who do not keep the Faith whole and entire.

I just want to point out that this is something you can find in the Catechism. For example, the Baltimore Catechism defines the Church as follows:

Q. 136. What is the Church?
A. The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.

Nowhere does this definition include “united by bonds of love.” This deeper union is the other half of the mystery: the Communion of Saints.

You could find this well explained in classical manuals of Ecclesiology such as Cardinal Billot’s De Ecclesia.

Again, this sounds like a nice conversation for a separate thread.

[Cade_One]

@TheBrokenEar

The Church is a society, an ordered whole engaged in a shared activity. This activity is the essential unity of the Church: it’s the profession of Faith.

I’m going to push back a little. The church is so much more than a society doing shared activities. We are the mystical body of Christ!

The SSPX is a society (it’s in the name).

This is what St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa (II-II, Q.1, art. 10):

I answer that, as stated above (Objection 1), a new edition of the symbol becomes necessary in order to set aside the errors that may arise…

We see an example of this in Acts 15, where there was a dispute on matters of Faith and St. Paul sends Barnabas and others to confer with The Apostles and elders in Jerusalem. It was St. Peter (our first Pope) who settled the dispute.

But what are Catholics to do when the Monarch of the Church no longer fulfills his role? When he teaches a different doctrine? All they can do is hold on to the Faith, and do whatever is in their power to continue in that same Faith.

I have asked this myself. I’ve considered the Eastern Orthodox Church, but then I would have a similar problem that the SSPX is leading themselves into.

In the Old Testament, we read about a Prime Minister under the King, being given the keys (Isaiah 22:22). This foreshadows Matthew 16:19, where we see the keys being given to St. Peter under Christ The King.

I don’t like any of this. And I think mistakes have been made on the part of both the Vatican and the SSPX. And I Pray for reconciliation.

And I also Pray for strong leadership on the part of Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Fernández, and the DDF as it pertains to some in the Church who are teaching nonsense!

I feel like we are being forced to choose a side between the Vatican (who turn a blind eye to Bishops and Priests who are perverting the Faith and causing confusion) and traditionally faithful Catholic Christians (like the SSPX, who are now being disobedient, because they feel like it is the only option for them).

And it sucks for individuals like myself who believes in obedience to the Bishop of Rome, while also being sympathetic to the traditionalists (including the SSPX).

@Tommy mentioned 1 Corinthians 1:10. I love that verse, because it illustrates the importance of unity among the faithful.

[Cade_One]

@TheBrokenEar

The Baltimore Catechism defines the Church as follows:

Q. 136. What is the Church?

A. The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.

Amen! This is what I was getting at.

[Tommy]

@TheBrokenEar

Nowhere does this definition include “united by bonds of love.”

Once again, your falling back to Cafeteria Christianity. What I present was St. Paul’s letters.

@TheBrokenEar

I just want to point out that this is something you can find in the Catechism. For example, the Baltimore Catechism defines the Church as follows:

Q. 136. What is the Church?
A. The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.

That’s correct. Absolutely correct. 100% correct. BUT READ IT ALL, especially “under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.”

Again, your points are using Cafeteria Christianity.

There is absolutely nothing, ZERO, a schismatic (or heretic) can say or do to convince me the appropriateness of division in the Church. I’ve fallen victim to it once in my life, and never will it happen again. NEVER! Because after such, I did something called “repent and believe”.

I encourage all SSPX schismatics (and heretics) to do the same.

[TheBrokenEar]

@Cade_One

The church is so much more than a society doing shared activities

The church is commonly defined as a (visible) society. But a society is a union of men working together towards a common goal, under the motion of an authority. This is a definition by the four causes:

• Material cause: men
• Formal: working together
• Final: common goal
• Motor: authority.

You can find this definition in St. Thomas’ Contra Impugnantes and it’s been taken up by other theologians such as Billot. I do a whole course on just this definition for my university students.

For the Church, these four cause are

• Material: the baptized
• Formal: Professing the faith (and secondly participating in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Sacrements)
• Final: For the salvation of their souls
• Motor: Under the motion of the pope and the bishops united to him.

I italicise the final cause, because that isn’t the constitutive, proximate final cause of the Church, but rather, the end that member propose for themselves as what they will attain through the Church. You’ll notice it doesn’t appear in the definition of the Church from the Catechism. More exactly, the final and formal cause are identical: they are a shared, common activity, performed together, that makes the society to be what it is. It’s chiefly the common profession of Faith.

In summary, what I am saying is that the Church is a society, and that a society is (in part, its formal part) a common activity, and this common activity is professing the Catholic Faith together.

[CanadianPriest]

One thing that is worth mentioning about this topic that I haven’t seen explicated is that there are different kinds of penalties.

There are some penalties that are quite simply punishments: inflicting hardships on those who do have disrupted justice.

But there are also medicinal penalties. That is, the purpose of them is to heal the offender. To wake them up to the fact that they have done wrong and need to repent.

Excommunication is an extreme penalty, so we might naturally think of it as being on of the first kind. However, it is actually treated as a medicinal penalty in canon law. The primary goal of excommunication is not to make a statement to the whole church or to crush the offenders, but rather so that those excommunicated may realize that they have sinned grievously and repent.

Medicine can be unpleasant. But our prayer should be that this medicine works so that the wounds of sin may be healed.

[TheBrokenEar]

I must admit that it is extremely painful for me not to be considered Catholic by my fellows.

Consider the consequences this has on my life:

• I am a Catholic academic, and essentially bared from holding faculty positions in most of the better Catholic universities.
• Receiving the sacrament of marriage now becomes complicated in ways I won’t bother to spell out here.
• Parishes where I would normally go to confession can now turn me away.
• My Catholic acquaintances, family, and family friends now consider me like a dangerous neo-protestant.
• I live with this sword over my head, that casts doubt on my eternal salvation.

Nevertheless, in conscience, I believe that where I am at is still the best way to remain Faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to his Church, and to work out my eternal salvation. And I would be willing to explain it in detail to anyone who cared to know.

No one has had the intelligence and charity to make an even reasonable attempt at showing me how I may have erred. All I get, from laity I meet, theologians I have worked with and stayed in touch with, speakers and writers one can find online is: obey, obey, obey.

But advocating for obedience is really beside the point here. In conscience, and to the best of my knowledge, I am being obedient, and condemned as schismatic for it.

[Cade_One]

@TheBrokenEar

No one has had the intelligence and charity to make an even reasonable attempt at showing me how I may have erred.

Insulting individuals is not the way to convince anyone of your position.

As I said, you can find posts on Twitter, and here on this forum where I have expressed similar frustrations. And where would I go if the Church wanted me to except things that go against Biblical and historical Church teachings on matters of Faith & Morals?

You are there. I get it. You believe the Church has gone too far. And you believe the SSPX is that vessel. Unfortunately, that vessel has chosen to go against the Historical channels to correct what they see as abuses (and I am not claiming that there are not abuses that need to be corrected).

I’m not about “obey, obey, obey.” I believe one can remain true and at the same time reject, but it depends on the matter. Tommy mentioned “Cafeteria Catholics” (this is not what I am referring to here). I am referring to instances where Priests and Bishops are pushing ideas or doing things that are opposed to the Deposit of Faith.

Two wrongs do not make a right. The SSPX may have valid concerns, but by doing what they did is also opposed to Sacred Tradition (even if it feels justified).

The SSPX has not been excommunicated for holding to truth. She has excommunicated herself by consecrating Bishops without the approval of the Pope.

The Church that I attend was, at one time, excommunicated (long before I was born). Apparently the Irish and the Germans could not get along and the Bishop at the time told them to suck it up and get along. Instead, the German Catholics chose to disobey the Bishop and broke off. They were excommunicated for nearly a decade before asking to return to communion with mother Church. It was granted and that is why we now have two Catholic Churches a few blocks apart (now under the same Priest).

[Tommy]

@Cade_One

Insulting individuals is not the way to convince anyone of your position.

This is correct! Thank you Cade.

Those who come to this discussion board (Catholic Talk) with intention to create division within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church will be met with extreme and unparalled opposition.

Personally, I have zero tolerance to such nonsense. I’m intolerant to disrespect upon the Church, or my Catholic brother and sisters. If this is you, be very glad that I’m not an administrator here because I would personally see to it that you, your user account, your email address, and your IP address be banned for life. Fortunately you have a form Moderator and an Administrator that is much more tolerant than I. I hold to a personal zero tolerance policy because of those things I’ve experienced, from those who don’t mind jeopardizing my salvation, for the sake of their own ego, pride, and ignorance.

The purpose of this Forum is to support Catholicism, grow in faith, and learn/acquire tools to living our faith. Discussion of heresy, schism, and misunderstandings of Catholicism typically can be fruitful and lead to growth in one’s walk with Christ.

I do believe, from experience, that when my faith and trust in the Roman Catholic Church is challenged, I grow. Those things make me stronger. My faith increases.

However, for those who come here with a closed mind and intent to create discord … division … seperation … distrust in our clergy and hierarchy … dissension … seperation … or post flagrant lies and half-truths will find themselves (and their credibility) in a very bad and regretful position. Don’t do it! Not here, nor on any Catholic forum.

[TheBrokenEar]

@Cade_One

The SSPX has not been excommunicated for holding to truth. She has excommunicated herself by consecrating Bishops without the approval of the Pope.

The root of the division between Rome and the SSPX is doctrinal.

The SSPX needed to consecrate bishops again if it intended to continue its ministry. Convenience would have suggested this be done a long time ago. But now, 38 years after the Consecrations of 1988, two aging bishops for 5 seminaries and over half a million souls spread throughout the world was not practically tenable anymore.

Why wouldn’t Rome allow for a Consecration, and approve the bishop candidates that were presented to Holy See? Fundamentally, it’s because the SSPX embodies an attitude which rejects (parts of) Vatican II and the official reforms that follow therefrom. That’s the motive for exclusion. Not because the SSPX says there is widespread abuse, but because they affirm that some official documents, laws and teachings, are abuses of power.

SSPX faithful who want to be “reconciled” need to effectively give a blanket assent to these Conciliar reforms. And in conscience, as a Catholic, I cannot do this.

I suppose there are two questions one might ask. (1) Is the view of the SSPX, in its overall assessment and in its specific criticisms correct? (2) Does the correctness of this view justify prohibited Consecrations ? Some might argue that even if the SSPX were completely correct in their assessment of the state of the Church (Yes to q.1), they still would not be justified in the decision to Consecrate (No to q. 2).

My own answer to those question is “yes” to both. I have a pretty high level of confidence for the first question. For the second, I find the decision acceptable and prudent, as best as I can judge.

[Cade_One]

@TheBrokenEar

Why wouldn’t Rome allow for a Consecration, and approve the bishop candidates that were presented to Holy See? Fundamentally, it’s because the SSPX embodies an attitude which rejects (parts of) Vatican II and the official reforms that follow therefrom. That’s the motive for exclusion.

I understand. So, what can the SSPX do? They could infiltrate the Vatican and become Pope and then make change, but this would be a very long game and most “conservatives” (for a lack of a better word) do not have the patience for the long game. This is true in the Church and in Politics. And truly I hat the the Church has become so political.

Pope Francis was super political. Pope Leo less so (from what I have seen so far), but he should have gotten rid of Cardinal Fernández earlier in his Pontificate. That dude is part of the problem in my opinion.

We need to get back to protecting doctrine and stop playing politics. I think you and I would agree on this.

My own answer to those question is “yes” to both.

You are not bias or anything ; )

[InvoSinner]

Dr. E Michael Jones (Catholic authour) has several good videos on this on Rumble (notably Ep. 176). He claims he visited Bp. Williamson (of the SSPX) a couple decades ago and the Bishop told him that he has a concilliatory letter from the Vatican, pending his signature, saying “I accept Vatican II in light of tradition.” Williamson refused to sign it.

Dr. Jones quotes St. Augustine who said the root cause of schism is a lack of charity. We see this whole arrogant “I’m right; you’re wrong” all throughout the world today. I really wonder what it would take for the SSPX to decide to become an obedient son again.