Any likelihood we could get a summary and a text of this video?
This is a very loose transcript, so please listen to the video if something doesn't look correct. Unofficial.
I transcribed the first half...The second half is attached, but it is only raw text and unformatted. I don't waste time with the synodal discussion they had.
Raymond Arroyo, The Prayerful Posse, July 3, 2026
73,000 views, yesterday, Sunday 78K views
YouTube Intro: The Vatican excommunicates six SSPX bishops following illicit episcopal ordinations – but what does this mean for priests, the faithful, and the future of the Traditional Latin Mass? Raymond Arroyo, Fr. Gerald Murray, and Robert Royal break down the Vatican’s decree, the canonical confusion surrounding SSPX, and what Pope Leo XIV’s next steps could mean for the Church.
Plus, The Posse examines controversy surrounding a Vatican celebration of a same-s*x partnership, Pope Leo’s meeting with Jesuit university leaders, concerns over synodality and the latest consistory, and why many Catholics believe the future of the Church depends on the restoring a renewed focus on the liturgy.
TIMESTAMP : 00:52 SSPX Ordinations
09:29: Vatican Decree Explained
13:54: Are the Laity Excommunicated?
18:10: Latin Mass Debate
25:51 London Church Controversy
28:34 Jesuit Universities
37:10 Extraordinary Consistory
Raymond Arroyo: The Vatican excommunicates six SSPX bishops within hours of their ordination. But what effect does this have on the laity and the priests involved in SSPX? The docuмent has some surprising answers for us, and so does 'The Prayerful Posse' up next.
Welcome ...And now, let's convene The Prayerful Posse. I am joined by Canon lawyer, priest of the Archdiocese of New York, Father Gerald Murray, and editor in chief of the Catholic Thing.org, Robert Royal.
Gentlemen, I've been dying to talk to you all. On July 1st, the Society of St. Pius X went ahead with those illicit ordinations of four bishops, defying Pope Leo's direct personal appeal issued the day before, in which he begged them, in his own words, to please turn back in the name of communion. The Vatican's response came within hours of formal decree of excommunication. naming names, and they named Bishop Alfonso de Galretta, the four new bishops, and Bishop Bernard Fellay, for co -consecrating.
Father, why did Rome move so swiftly and with this specificity?
Fr. Murray: Well, they did so because it's the declaration of a penalty. It's not the imposition. In canon law, there are two things. You declare an automatic penalty when it's been incurred, and the judgment of the authority. An imposition of a penalty is - you have a process, judicial administrative, you have a hearing, then you make a judgment. In this case, there's an automatic excommunication attached to illegally consecrating bishops without a papal mandate, and there's an automatic excommunication for SCHISM. So once the ordinations were carried out, which the Holy See had warned would be an act of schism, then you simply have to publicly declare that the penalty's been incurred. The reason you do that is, you want to bring the offending parties back to full communion by recognizing their offense, and want to warn the rest of the faithful not to engage in similar behaviour, and not to associate and approve such behaviour, such that you would distance yourself and affect the endorsing a schism, and becoming a schismatic yourself. …
RA: Now, the decree as you allude there, the decree doesn't stop at the six bishops, Father. It also warns that any priest or lay person who formally adheres to the Society incurs the same excommunication, in similar language, to the 1988 LeFebvre consecrations. Father, you wrote your own licentiate thesis on exactly this question of lay formal adherence 30 years ago. Does Rome still know what that phrase means in practice, and is the Catholic who's been going to an SSPX chapel, say for the Latin mass, are they now excommunicated?
Fr. M.: Well,... this is very good question. There are 2 adherences that are spoken of in the various Roman docuмents we've gotten the last two days. Adherence to the schism, or adherence to the Fraternity, and adherence, a third category, be adherence to the doctrinal positions of the Fraternity. This is all very confusing.
What it comes down to is, six people were declared to be excommunicated in the decree. Those are the bishops who did the ordaining and were ordained, and then, there's an explanatory note, which states that the priests of the Fraternity of (St. Pius X), they're excommunicated for being schismatics. Then there's a saying that lay people who adhere to the doctrinal and disciplinary positions or decisions of the Fraternity are likewise subject to communication, if they have an interior spirit of doing so.
This is a canonical mess, an explanatory note can explain what a decree contains. It can't add to a decree. So the decree did not say the priests were excommunicated, therefore, the explanatory note cannot do that, having legal effect. This was a canonical mistake on the part of the authors of this docuмent- It's very regrettable. Same applies to lay people, that we would say, in the decree, there's a warning, we call that a canonical warning, not to adhere to the schism. That's a warning. Now, the next question is, what specifically are you supposed to do so that you don't adhere to a system? That level of specificity is not given. It has to be an act. It can't be a mental attitude, because you don't judge the mind of people unless it's been expressed in words.
So, this, I know, there's a little complicated legal stuff, but it's very important, because people out there want to know. So when you're reading as a canonist, the priests are NOT excommunicated. They have not been declared excommunicated in the decree, therefore, they are not held by the Vatican to be excommunicated. Now, they could be schismatics and gain ...an automatic or excommunication for being a schismatic, but as long as that has not been declared, it doesn't have public effect. And, of course, we know that the Society has maintained all along that they're not schismatics. So you could say that priests could be in a state of good faith and making that assertion, although it's hard to do that at the same time, say we submit to the Holy See, and therefore, we know the Holy See says this is schismatic behaviour what the bishops did, and if I adhere to it, I, too, become a schismatic, because I'm embracing a schismatic position. Very, very, uh, deficient canonical proceedings so far.
RA: Yeah, I'm gonna delve into that in a moment, but I want to get to Bob with this. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which published this decree, they note “steps back on the road to recovery”, if you will, for SSPX priests, Bob, including. So they list criteria that a priest must adhere to if he wants to come into full communion:
1. Find an ordinary, who will adopt him, basically, into the diocese,
2. Appeal to the pope in writing,
3. Sign a profession of faith,
4. Accept the legitimacy of the Novus Ordo Missae, the New Mass, and
5. Serve one to three year probation before incardiation before being fully availed of your faculties.
Bob, what do you think the reaction of these SSPX priests will be to this formal “Road back to full communion”, if you will?
Robert Royal: Well, generally speaking, I don't like making predictions. I mean, the Old Testament tells us not to be fortune tellers, so I think we should just wait and see what actually happens in this case. I suppose there'll be some fallout, some will not like the fact that they're going directly against the wishes of Pope Leo XIV. But I have to think that, by and large, they've already made that decision, that they're already on that side of the river. And, you know, some of these criteria that are presented, like accepting Vatican II, for example, I think that there's a confusion here.
I hear from a lot of people who seem to think that the SSPX is being unfairly put under a microscope, when in fact, you know, you don't have to accept everything that was said at Vatican II. There's a large dispute within the Church already about that. You certainly don't have to accept everything that happened after Vatican II. I really think there's a confusion, even within SSPX, that somehow, things that have happened since 1965 all have to be accepted. That is not the case, either. So, there's a mess here, there's a mess in the docuмents,as Father, has just been talking about... And I think a lot of people are confused. I hear from people all the time, that what they think is happening is, simply because the SSPX is a champion of the Latin mass, that they're being punished in a way that the people who are abusive of the Novus Ordo mass are not being punished. And that's a different question.
Those people should be reeled in by their local bishop. But this is a direct challenge to the pope, which was scheduled for the anniversary of the 1988, a direct contradiction of the pope. So, to me, there's a spirit of resistance here that you can't walk away from. I think that the priests who are still members of the SSPX are probably implicated in this, but we'll just have to see how many of them decide that this, you know, this conflict with the Pope is puts an end to their adherence. I don't think it's going to be many.
RA: Yeah. Father, I mean, you pointed out that, in many have. I've been reading, you know, very complex, I have to say, breakdowns by canon lawyers, trying to explain this decree, and why it is deficient in the way that it has been released, with a decree, and then an explanatory note, that refers to a 1996 agreement that the Vatican extended. So Cardinal Fernandez, in this docuмent, while excommunicating the six bishops by name, the 700 priests, he also seeks to excommunicate, but he does so in the note, as you mentioned. And all these canon lawyers I'm reading say, because this decree lacks penal form, that that excommunication doesn't extend to the 700 priests. Is that what you're saying as well?
Fr. M.: Well, ...what I'm saying is that the priests are labeled as schismatics in the explanatory note, which means they committed some act that's schismatic in the eyes of the Holy See. The bishops' schismatic act was to ordain or get ordained as bishops. That's quite, you know, that's a public fact, that's verifiable. The Holy See did not declare in the decree any of the priests who have committed a schismatic act. But on the other hand, in the explanatory note, they say they're schismatic. So all you can do is presume that the Holy See is saying, your active schism was remaining in the Society, which has committed a certain act, and that two of its bishops ordained four of its priests as bishops. But that has to be specified, because when there's a penalty that's going to be given, there has to be an instance where you say, Well, before this moment, I didn't have the penalty. Now I have it, because I did a schismatic act.
RA: Yeah. But, Father, there's another point here that, and I've gotten a lot of emails about this over the last few days. The question is, the docuмent claims in the explanatory note that if you receive the sacrament of marriage or confession from an SSPX priest, that that's invalid. But wait a minute. Pope Francis said that SSPX priests could perform marriages and confessions with no restrictions. He lifted the restrictions on that. And this note doesn't have the power or force, I am told, to abrogate that papal order, right?
Fr M.: ...well, let's look at that, absolutely. The reason the confessions of the priests of SSPX, during the reign of Francis, they got permission, they got faculties to hear confessions given by Pope Francis, and was formalized in a decree, or a docuмent from the Pope. An act of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and an explanatory note, cannot undo what Pope Francis did. So they missed the boat on that. They have to get Pope Leo to issue a decree revoking what Pope Francis did. As regards marriages, the pope, Pope Francis gave priests the permission to seek delegation in from a parish, or a bishop in a diocese, to be able to witness marriages. They don't have that power apart from a relationship with the local diocese. Again, that is a papal decree issue by Pope Francis... that cannot be undone in this case.
Now, they also should say, canon law allows any priest to validly absolve a sinner in danger of death. They never referred to that in this decree, and that was a mistake, and then the common doctrine in canon law is that if a priest is asked to hear a confession of a penitent who thinks the priest has jurisdiction, that the Church grants jurisdiction to hear that confession. The reason, of course, that you don't want to deprive the faithful in the state of mortal sin of the solace of receiving pardon in the sacrament.
So, again, this is very poorly done, because you have to deal with the law as the law is written, not as you wish it was written. I understand the mind of Cardinal Fernandez, which I'm sure reflects the mind of Pope Leo, which is to establish a serious breach in the unity of the Church has happened, and has consequences. But those consequences only come into effect when you actually make it happen by legally recognizable decrees. There's a reason for that. I can't read the mind of the pope, therefore, I shouldn't be publicly penalized based on what someone tells me the mind of the pope is. It has to be laid out in a legally recognizable form.
RA.: Hmm. Bob, lay people who are in the Society of Pius X, Third order, are also called to sign a profession of faith and fidelity to a local ordinary. Can't the laity harbour doubt? I mean, you reference this a moment ago. Can the laity harbour doubts about the implementation of this New mass.? The truth is, in a lot of places, the mass described in the Vatican II docuмents, we talk about this almost every week. The mass of the Vatican 2 docuмents is not always happening at the parish level. I mean, this is the core of the Society of Pius X's protest, isn't it, Bob?
RR.: The request to accept Vatican II does not mean everything that has happened since Vatican 2 is needs to be accepted, because as we know, simply on the matter of literature, just to stick with that for a moment, with the docuмents of Vatican 2 say, is almost diametrically opposed to what we got in the Novusrdo mass these days. I mean, learning chant in Latin. I mean, Latin is explicitly mentioned in the docuмent, on the liturgy, that is to be cherished and fostered. In other words, people were supposed to be taught more about this. They haven't. I mean, I asked my wife, after a Latin mass the other day, if she knew that even Our Father in Latin, and she doesn't. And I think that's the case for most people. I do, because I grew up in the Latin church...my wife grew up in an Ukrainian church.
But, you know, Pope Leo has been, in his Wednesday audience, is going through the docuмent on the liturgy. So far, he hasn't touched on those hot button issues that are in the docuмent itself. Right. And so if we're going to read, if we're going to go back to Vatican 2, I think we're going to see a lot more sympathetic stuff that the SSPX would be happy for us to be discussing. And I hope that they would, I wish that they would be inside the Church helping to energize that discussion. But unfortunately, we're now in this sad and tragic circuмstance that we're in.
RA.: Yeah, and we should know, and I believe I'm right on this. ..Archbishop Lefebvre, he signed the Vatican II docuмents. Right. So, one would assume he affirmed and agreed with this with the Vatican II docuмent on the liturgy.
Fr. M.?: Very true. He did sign that docuмent, and, he recognized the validity of the new mass. That's a public fact, he did not say it was invalid. So, you know, the issue here is that there's a confusion in the docuмents that we got, and we got four docuмents, a decree, an explanatory note, and then two practical, steps, docuмents, about reconciling priests, and then reconciling laity that was sent to nuncios to instruct bishops. They're all over the place. Aren't they just not specifically saying what the reality is?
I'll just give one example. The docuмent about the laity, it basically assumes that laypeople who attend mass at the St. Pius X Society, on a regular base, or belong to one of their organizations, are out of full communion with the Church, and need to be reconciled and brought back into full communion of the Church. But wait a minute.! They haven't been excommunicated. Therefore, they're not under a canonical penalty that affects their full communion, and the idea that you lose full communion, because you agree with some of the things that the Society says, that's not good enough. You have to identify which teachings of the Society are heretical, and therefore to be avoided, and not embraced. If you do that, and then you can tell people, okay, if you profess these heretical teachings of the Society of Pius X, you are automatically excommunicated, and to be reconciled, you have to reject those teachings. That none of that is in there. So it's a mess.
RA.: Yeah, no, it... They're playing on the ambiguity here, and I worry about the headlines, even in Catholic media. You know, excommunicated. It makes, it sound like anyone who's ever gone to a chapel is excommunicated, which are the questions I've been getting. ‘You know, Raymond, I've gone to an SSPX chapel with my family, you know, on and off for the last three years. Am I now excommunicated? ‘ Well, the answer, I guess, the short answer is, no, you're not.
Uh, but I want to go on Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who condemned the SSPX ordinations without hesitation. This week publicly called on the Pope to reverse Pope Francis' limitations on the traditional Latin mass. Traditionis custodis, the docuмent that really limited and was used to ban the Latin mass in many parishes. Cardinal Mueller says, full acceptance of the old mass is also a solution for SSPX Faithful trying to find a home. Bob . is Mueller the only cardinal here really connecting these stories with any consistency?
RR.: Well, I think he and Cardinal Burke, who certainly are two of the strongest members of the College of Cardinals, both agreed that these ordinations of bishops should not have gone forward. This is a direct contradiction of the will of the Pope, and that's something that an authentic Catholic should not do. I like what Cardinal Mueller is doing, because, you know, a lot of people have been saying that the optics of this are bad, and, okay, okay, in an immediate age, optics are important, but you still have to make some tough decisions even if they look bad to the general population.
And of course, the secular press, in particular, let alone the Catholic, but the secular press, in particular, are going to try to exacerbate things that they, you know, they like to see the SSPX consigned to the outer darkness, where there's the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But Mueller, I think, has put his finger on an important point. And that is, it would draw away from the criticism that this is solely an attempt to suppress the Latin mass by allowing those broader instances, as Pope Benedict, solved this problem by saying that we would have this mutual enrichment. We used that phrase multiple times in this show, that there's a mutual enrichment that can take place. We look back to the pre-conciliar liturgy, and we talk about what's good in the post conciliar liturgy. So what he's saying, in effect, is, look, we're going to allow this to happen on a broader level, and this should take away from this facile criticism that all the Pope is trying to do is to suppress more traditional Catholics. That's not the case, by the way. here. There are already institutes that are allowed to celebrate the traditional Latin mass within the Church, but this would just make it a broader message that goes out. And unfortunately, again, in a media age, what you say and what gets communicated are two different things. And, you know, Father has been trying to sort out this confused, and unfortunately, I think, incompetent way of dealing with the canon law situation here. And if we can't figure it all out, what is the world at large gonna be able to do?
YRA.: Yeah. Father, uh, I mean, Pope Benedict had put his finger on a solution here, and I would argue, had Pope Benedict's original docuмent, the original ‘moto proprio’, allowing the Latin mass, the traditional Latin mass, to be celebrated by any priest anywhere. Had that been allowed to continue in practice, we had peace in the land, and I would argue, the need that people feel to go to a place like an SSPX Chapel would have been diminished. And indeed, when Pope Francis dropped Traditionis Custodes, the membership in the SSPX chapels went through the roof, because there was a market need.
Fr. M.: No, you're absolutely right, Raymond. And this really is, I think, Pope Leo has to take serious thought about this, because it is a contradictory, in my opinion, to tell people: ‘Do not attend the SSPX masses,’ but on the other hand, nothing changes about how we're going to provide for traditional Latin masses, within ...the full communion of the Church. It's not good. And by the way, there are hundreds of thousands of Catholics who have nothing to do with the Pius X Society, who want to go to the traditional Latin mass, and can't, because Pope Francis told them: ‘ You can't have this, we'll give it little permissions here and there, but the ultimate goal is to eliminate the celebration of the Traditional Latin mass in the Church. That's what was in his letter, accompanying TC, Traditionis Custodes... That was a mistake. You don't have to agree with every papal decision to be a true Catholic. And the fact is, Pope, remind ourselves, Pope Francis disagreed with Pope Benedict. Yes. And we know that Pope Benedict, when he learned that this decision was terribly troubled. So there's no problem to Leo to say, Well, guess what? I picked Benedict over Francis on this matter, and it's not, it's not your personalities. The spiritual welfare of the faithful. How many times are we gonna have sermons about, ‘we need to be evangelizing apostles, drawing souls to Christ? Young people of the future of the Church. Large families of the future of the Church. ‘Guess where all of those people want to go to mass? Many of them. They want to go to the Latin Mass. Priests like me in a diocese, why can’t we celebrate the Latin Mass without any restrictions?…
Transcript beyond this point is available as ‘raw text only’ in the attached file.
Topic: Were the Excommunications a Publicity Stunt? (Read 391 times)