Fraternal Appeal to Leo XIV to Build a Bridge with the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X.
- In this debate, new quasi-dogmas are being established that do not exist in the Depositum fidei.
- These quasi-dogmas maintain that the Pope’s consent to a bishop’s consecration is of divine right, and that a consecration carried out without this consent, or even against a papal prohibition, constitutes in itself a schismatic act.
- Centuries of ecclesial practice, as well as traditional canon law, stand in opposition to such absolutizing assertions.
Canonical Argument
- In the first millennium of the Church’s life, episcopal consecrations were generally performed without formal papal permission, and candidates were not required to be approved by the Pope.
- According to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, an episcopal consecration carried out against the will of the Pope was punished not with excommunication, but only with suspension.
- In 357, St Athanasius disobeyed the order of Pope Liberius, who instructed him to enter into hierarchical communion with the overwhelming majority of the episcopate, which was in fact Arian or semi-Arian. As a result, he was excommunicated.
Doctrinal Crisis
- The current crisis surrounding the announced - but as yet unapproved - episcopal consecrations in the FSSPX exposes, before the eyes of the whole Church, a wound that has been smouldering for over sixty years.
- This wound can be figuratively described as the ecclesial cancer of doctrinal and liturgical ambiguities.
- The problem isn’t that Vatican II was heretical. The problem is that it was ambiguous.
- When a doctrinal ‘development’ seems to contradict what came before, or when it requires decades of theological gymnastics to reconcile with previous magisterial teaching, we have to ask: Is this development, or is it rupture disguised as development?
Defense of FSSPX
- One may reasonably assume that the FSSPX desires nothing more than to help the Church emerge from this ambiguity in doctrine and liturgy and to rediscover her saving perennial clarity.
- The Holy See should be grateful to the FSSPX.
- The FSSPX is currently almost the only major ecclesiastical reality that forthrightly and publicly points out the existence of ambiguous and misleading elements in certain statements of the Council and the Novus Ordo Missae.
- If they did not love the Church, the Pope, and souls, they would not undertake this work.
Critique of Rome
- It would be a tragedy if the FSSPX were completely cut off, and the responsibility for such a division would rest primarily with the Holy See.
- The Holy See should bring the FSSPX in, offering at least a minimum degree of Church integration, and then continue the doctrinal dialogue.
- The Holy See has shown remarkable generosity toward the Communist Party of China, allowing them to select candidates for bishops—yet her own children… are treated as second-class citizens.
- The FSSPX is required to make a Professio fidei by which the teachings of a pastoral, and not definitive, nature from the last Council and the subsequent Magisterium must be accepted. If this is truly the so-called “minimum requirement,” then Cardinal Victor Fernández appears to be playing games with words.
Direct Appeal to Pope Leo XIV
- Provisional and minimal pastoral measures… including a pontifical mandate for episcopal consecrations - would create the conditions necessary to calmly clarify misunderstandings.
- “Most Holy Father, grant the Apostolic Mandate for the episcopal consecrations of the FSSPX.”
- “Stand aside from the partisanship of others and, with a great paternal and truly Augustinian spirit, demonstrate that you are building bridges.”
- „Do not go down in the history of the Church as one who failed to build this bridge… and who instead allowed a truly unnecessary and painful further division within the Church.”
Picture: Vatican Media, #newsSmtrxlaymp