Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Crisis in the Church => Topic started by: Centroamerica on January 06, 2026, 07:43:25 AM
-
The End of the “State of Necessity”:
How the Eastern Catholic Churches Undermine the SSPX Justification
For decades, the Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has justified its irregular canonical actions—most notably unauthorized episcopal consecrations—by invoking a state of necessity in the Church. The claim is familiar: the Roman Rite was radically altered, doctrine was destabilized, and the faithful were left without reliable access to orthodox worship and formation. Extraordinary measures, the SSPX argues, therefore became morally and spiritually justified.
That argument no longer holds—if it ever did.
The continued, public, and unbroken existence of the Eastern Catholic Churches exposes a fatal flaw in the SSPX narrative: true doctrine, apostolic worship, and sacramental life never disappeared from the Catholic Church. They remained fully intact, visible, and accessible—without schism, without rebellion, and without rupture.
1. Necessity Requires Absence — and Absence Never Occurred
In Catholic moral theology, necessity presupposes privation: something essential must be unavailable through ordinary means. But necessity collapses the moment a legitimate alternative exists within the Church.
The Eastern Catholic Churches—Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian, among others—never abandoned:
- Apostolic liturgy
- Patristic theology
- Sacrificial worship
- Objective sacramental discipline
- A non-anthropocentric orientation to God
They remained in full communion with Rome, without adopting novel doctrinal formulations or reconstructing their rites to suit modern sensibilities.
If orthodox Catholic life continued somewhere in the Church, then it was never extinguished everywhere. And if it was never extinguished everywhere, then a global “state of necessity” cannot be sustained.
2. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi — Taken Seriously
The Eastern Christian principle lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”) is not rhetorical—it is operative.
In the East:
- Doctrine is embedded in worship, not appended to it.
- There is no separation between catechesis and liturgy.
- Nothing is believed that is not prayed.
The Divine Liturgy of St. john Chrysostom proclaims, week after week:
- The sacrificial nature of the Eucharist
- The transcendence of God
- The unworthiness of the worshipper
- The reality of judgment, repentance, and deification
No doctrinal “correction” was required. No rupture was needed. The East simply continued.
This continuity alone dismantles the SSPX claim that orthodoxy required extra-canonical survival strategies.
3. Vatican II Did Not Bind the East in the Way Claimed by the SSPX
A central SSPX contention is that post-conciliar reforms imposed doctrinal ambiguities and liturgical novelties universally. But this is historically and theologically false.
The Eastern Catholic Churches:
- Did not rewrite their liturgies
- Did not adopt fabricated Eucharistic prayers
- Did not redefine sacramental theology
- Did not collapse vertical worship into horizontal assembly
Even after the Second Vatican Council, the East was explicitly told to preserve its traditions intact. The result is observable reality: a living refutation of the SSPX premise.
If Vatican II were intrinsically destructive to Catholic worship and doctrine, the Eastern Churches would have collapsed alongside the Roman Rite. They did not.
4. Visibility Matters: The Church Never Went Underground
Another implicit SSPX assumption is that the Church entered a kind of eclipse—where fidelity survived only in resistance movements operating at the margins.
Yet Eastern Catholic parishes:
- Remained public
- Remained canonical
- Remained sacramental
- Remained orthodox
They did not require states of emergency to function. They required only fidelity to their received tradition.
This matters because Catholic ecclesiology is incarnational and visible. Christ did not found a Church that survives only through exceptional disobedience. The continued existence of orthodox Eastern Catholic life demonstrates that the Church retained within herself the means of sanctification, even amid Western turmoil.
5. The SSPX Problem Is Roman-Centric, Not Catholic
At its core, the SSPX crisis analysis is Latin-centric. It assumes that if the Roman Rite collapses, the Church collapses.
But Catholicity is not uniformity.
The East shows that the crisis was not universal, but localized—a self-inflicted wound within the Latin Church’s own reform process. That reality does not justify permanent exceptionalism, parallel hierarchies, or episcopal acts without mandate.
A true state of necessity must be:
- Universal
- Absolute
- Inescapable
The Eastern Catholic Churches prove none of those conditions were met.
Conclusion: Necessity Has an Expiration Date
Even if one grants—for the sake of argument—that a limited necessity existed in the immediate post-conciliar chaos, necessity cannot be permanent. It ends when ordinary means are restored or shown never to have vanished.
The East shows us that:
- Orthodox worship never ceased
- Apostolic doctrine never disappeared
- Communion with Rome did not require doctrinal compromise
Therefore, the SSPX’s continued invocation of necessity no longer functions as a justification—it functions as a refusal to recognize Catholic plurality and continuity.
The crisis is real.
But the Church was never absent.
And where the Church was never absent, necessity never truly existed.
-
I'm not familiar enough with the Rites though I did attend a Byzantine Rite for a while. They still accept Vatican II though, right? Kind of like the Fraternity (and basically the SSPX)? Any Eastern Rite clerics blasting the Modernist spew coming from the idiots-in-white?
It's an interesting idea but the Latin Rite also made up about 99.99% of the Church so there would still be, practically speaking, nowhere to go. If people decry the 'home aloner' situation now, what would they do when pretty much the entire Church went home alone?
-
Just TWO POINTS
1. The SSPX no longer operates under the state of necessity. So all this should be pointed at the resistance.
2. The Easterns have all accepted Vatican II and "reforms" to their liturgy. Did you miss the article by Father Mina George? We also have Eastern Catholics in the resistance in Ukraine. Are all these people wasting their time? So eastern catholics do and must recognize the state of necessity. God in his mercy has given grace to some easterns to see the crises in the Church so that those rites will not be lost.
-
I just reread it and saw this:
"They remained fully intact, visible, and accessible—without schism, without rebellion, and without rupture."
I'd agree that schism is what happens when you recognize a pontiff and reject everything he teaches and does in his faith, morals and disciplines.
I'd argue the complete implosion of doctrine unfortunately forced the hand of any Catholic with a brain to look elsewhere.
- not sure why the font turned huge.
-
Just TWO POINTS
1. The SSPX no longer operates under the state of necessity. So all this should be pointed at the resistance.
The question is proposed towards any R and R using the Crisis and “state of necessity” for episcopal consecrations.
2. The Easterns have all accepted Vatican II and "reforms" to their liturgy. Did you miss the article by Father Mina George? We also have Eastern Catholics in the resistance in Ukraine. Are all these people wasting their time? So eastern catholics do and must recognize the state of necessity. God in his mercy has given grace to some easterns to see the crises in the Church so that those rites will not be lost.
I’m not arguing that Vatican II didn’t promote doctrinal error. I agree that it did—particularly on religious liberty, ecuмenism, and the re-framing of non-Christian religions.
The question is whether those errors ever became the faith of the Church as believed and lived.
In the Eastern Catholic Churches, doctrine is not primarily received through conciliar texts or episcopal policy statements. It is received through worship. Lex orandi, lex credendi is not a slogan in the East; it is the governing principle of theology.
And here is the key point: none of the contested Vatican II errors were ever prayed into the Eastern rites.
There is no liturgical affirmation of religious liberty as a natural right to error.
There is no ecuмenical liturgy that treats false religions as salvific paths.
There is no redefinition of the Church’s uniqueness or Christ’s exclusive mediation.
What the East prays today is what it prayed before the Council.
That matters because in Eastern theology, what is not prayed is not believed—no matter what appears in docuмents. The Council’s errors remained textual, not ecclesial, in the East.
This is also why the Filioque is relevant. The East never accepted a doctrinal formula simply because it was promulgated juridically. They resisted it precisely because it altered the Church’s prayer and therefore the Church’s belief. Rome eventually conceded that the Creed could be professed without the Filioque, implicitly admitting that worship governs doctrine, not the other way around.
So the argument is not “Vatican II was harmless.”
It’s that its errors never became Catholic belief where lex orandi was preserved.
Which means the Church never lost the Faith as such.
And if the Faith was never lost everywhere, then a permanent “state of necessity” cannot be sustained.
That doesn’t refute the SSPX critique of the Council.
It refutes the claim that the Church as a whole entered doctrinal extinction.
-
2. The Easterns have all accepted Vatican II and "reforms" to their liturgy. Did you miss the article by Father Mina George? We also have Eastern Catholics in the resistance in Ukraine. Are all these people wasting their time? So eastern catholics do and must recognize the state of necessity. God in his mercy has given grace to some easterns to see the crises in the Church so that those rites will not be lost.
The SSPX aligned group Society of St. Josephat brought Latinizations into the Byzantine Liturgy that potentially harmed the Byzantine Tradition.
What Latinizations Look Like in Practice
Latinizations are not merely optional devotions or pious extras. In the context of the Society of St. Josaphat, they include:
A. Liturgical Additions Foreign to Byzantine Prayer
- Western-style genuflections at moments not prescribed in the Eastern rubrics.
- Introductory prayers and printed rubrical cues that resemble the Roman Missal rather than the Divine Liturgy.
- “Post-Communion thanksgiving” formulas that interrupt the liturgical flow of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
These changes may seem trivial in isolation, but cuмulatively they overwrite the internal logic of Eastern worship — where the liturgy itself is the primary locus of theological expression.
-
As long as the East is ignored, they can argue that Vatican II necessitated parallel structures, extraordinary jurisdiction, and perpetual emergency measures. But the moment the Byzantine Catholic Churches are taken seriously, that narrative weakens — because they show that the Faith, the sacraments, and apostolic worship never vanished from the Catholic Church.
So instead of engaging that fact honestly, some SSPX-minded writers do something more convenient: they slander the Byzantine tradition. They portray it as naïve, compromised, or doctrinally deficient — not because it is, but because it undermines the logic of their own existence.
The irony is sharp:
They accuse Rome of novelty while importing Latin categories into a rite that predates them, then dismiss the East when it refuses to conform to their crisis framework.
The Byzantine Rite doesn’t need SSPX validation.
It never needed an emergency theology to survive.
And that quiet continuity is precisely what exposes the limits of SSPX cleverness.
They aren’t threatened by Eastern theology.
They’re threatened by Eastern normalcy.
-
I’m not arguing that Vatican II didn’t promote doctrinal error. I agree that it did—particularly on religious liberty, ecuмenism, and the re-framing of non-Christian religions.
The question is whether those errors ever became the faith of the Church as believed and lived.
In the Eastern Catholic Churches, doctrine is not primarily received through conciliar texts or episcopal policy statements. It is received through worship. Lex orandi, lex credendi is not a slogan in the East; it is the governing principle of theology.
And here is the key point: none of the contested Vatican II errors were ever prayed into the Eastern rites.
There is no liturgical affirmation of religious liberty as a natural right to error.
There is no ecuмenical liturgy that treats false religions as salvific paths.
There is no redefinition of the Church’s uniqueness or Christ’s exclusive mediation.
What the East prays today is what it prayed before the Council.
That matters because in Eastern theology, what is not prayed is not believed—no matter what appears in docuмents. The Council’s errors remained textual, not ecclesial, in the East.
This is also why the Filioque is relevant. The East never accepted a doctrinal formula simply because it was promulgated juridically. They resisted it precisely because it altered the Church’s prayer and therefore the Church’s belief. Rome eventually conceded that the Creed could be professed without the Filioque, implicitly admitting that worship governs doctrine, not the other way around.
So the argument is not “Vatican II was harmless.”
It’s that its errors never became Catholic belief where lex orandi was preserved.
The Byzantine rite accepts the Filioque, the same as pre-V2 Western Catholicism, right? In other words, the Byzantine is not orthodox, right?
Which means the Church never lost the Faith as such.
And if the Faith was never lost everywhere, then a permanent “state of necessity” cannot be sustained.
Yes and no. Yes, I agree with your analysis that a handful of non-orthodox, eastern rites were not corrupted by V2. No, I disagree that the Trads "state of necessity" in the West thereby goes away. Because a catholic cannot simply switch rites (i.e. from latin to eastern) as he wants. That's not the purpose of the rites, to be switched back and forth. Also, I don't think God would want all of the West to simply abandon the latin rite and go eastern. Thus, the "state of necessity" still exists...for the latin church.
That doesn’t refute the SSPX critique of the Council.
It refutes the claim that the Church as a whole entered doctrinal extinction.
I don't know if anyone ever claimed that the Church "as a whole" was doctrinally extinct or corrupt.
Arguably, if the pope says the V2 rites are ok, then even the Byzantine rite would have to implicitly accept this, because they are under the pope. Practically, it wouldn't change what they do, but this is still a corruption.
Regardless, when latin rite people say the "church is corrupted" they typically mean their rite. Honestly, I have no idea about the Byzantine rites (or any other legit eastern rites) and couldn't tell you much about them at all. I just know that the latin rite is in chaos and thus, for us, there is a state of necessity.
-
The Byzantine rite accepts the Filioque, the same as pre-V2 Western Catholicism, right? In other words, the Byzantine is not orthodox, right?
Eastern rite Byzantine churches in Communion with Rome do not say the “filioque” and never have. The reasoning and history behind that alone is what led to this entire post.
-
Yes and no. Yes, I agree with your analysis that a handful of non-orthodox, eastern rites were not corrupted by V2. No, I disagree that the Trads "state of necessity" in the West thereby goes away. Because a catholic cannot simply switch rites (i.e. from latin to eastern) as he wants. That's not the purpose of the rites, to be switched back and forth. Also, I don't think God would want all of the West to simply abandon the latin rite and go eastern. Thus, the "state of necessity" still exists...for the latin church.
I don't know if anyone ever claimed that the Church "as a whole" was doctrinally extinct or corrupt.
Arguably, if the pope says the V2 rites are ok, then even the Byzantine rite would have to implicitly accept this, because they are under the pope. Practically, it wouldn't change what they do, but this is still a corruption.
Regardless, when latin rite people say the "church is corrupted" they typically mean their rite. Honestly, I have no idea about the Byzantine rites (or any other legit eastern rites) and couldn't tell you much about them at all. I just know that the latin rite is in chaos and thus, for us, there is a state of necessity.
You’re shifting the claim mid-argument.
I’m not saying Catholics should “switch rites at will,” nor that the West should abandon the Latin Rite. I agree with you on both counts. But neither point salvages a permanent state of necessity.
A state of necessity in Catholic theology is not defined by personal inconvenience, disciplinary immobility, or demographic imbalance. It is defined by the absence of the Church’s essential goods: valid sacraments, orthodox faith, and apostolic worship within the Church.
Those goods continued to exist visibly, canonically, and uninterrupted.
The fact that a Latin Catholic cannot casually transfer rites does not magically recreate necessity. Necessity does not arise because a particular rite is damaged; it arises only if the Church herself is unable to provide the Faith by ordinary means. That condition was never met.
And yes — some SSPX writers do argue functional extinction. When they justify:
- extraordinary jurisdiction indefinitely
- unauthorized episcopal consecrations
- parallel hierarchies
- suspension of normal canonical obedience
they are implicitly claiming that ordinary ecclesial structures failed globally and permanently. You can soften the language, but the logic is unavoidable.
As for the Pope “approving” the Novus Ordo and this somehow binding the East: that confuses juridical authority with reception. Eastern Catholic Churches did not receive Vatican II by reconstructing worship. They continued praying what they had always prayed. That is precisely why the Faith remained intact there — regardless of Roman administrative decisions about the Latin Rite.
So the dilemma remains:
- If the Faith continued to exist somewhere in the Church, necessity cannot be universal.
- If necessity is not universal, it cannot justify permanent extraordinary measures.
This does not refute the SSPX critique of Vatican II.
It refutes the claim that the crisis justifies an open-ended emergency ecclesiology.
The problem isn’t that the Latin Rite was harmed.
It’s that harm to one rite does not equal the disappearance of the Church.
And that distinction matters.
-
I’m not arguing that Vatican II didn’t promote doctrinal error. I agree that it did—particularly on religious liberty, ecuмenism, and the re-framing of non-Christian religions.
The question is whether those errors ever became the faith of the Church as believed and lived.
In the Eastern Catholic Churches, doctrine is not primarily received through conciliar texts or episcopal policy statements. It is received through worship. Lex orandi, lex credendi is not a slogan in the East; it is the governing principle of theology.
And here is the key point: none of the contested Vatican II errors were ever prayed into the Eastern rites.
There is no liturgical affirmation of religious liberty as a natural right to error.
There is no ecuмenical liturgy that treats false religions as salvific paths.
There is no redefinition of the Church’s uniqueness or Christ’s exclusive mediation.
What the East prays today is what it prayed before the Council.
That matters because in Eastern theology, what is not prayed is not believed—no matter what appears in docuмents. The Council’s errors remained textual, not ecclesial, in the East.
This is also why the Filioque is relevant. The East never accepted a doctrinal formula simply because it was promulgated juridically. They resisted it precisely because it altered the Church’s prayer and therefore the Church’s belief. Rome eventually conceded that the Creed could be professed without the Filioque, implicitly admitting that worship governs doctrine, not the other way around.
So the argument is not “Vatican II was harmless.”
It’s that its errors never became Catholic belief where lex orandi was preserved.
Which means the Church never lost the Faith as such.
And if the Faith was never lost everywhere, then a permanent “state of necessity” cannot be sustained.
That doesn’t refute the SSPX critique of the Council.
It refutes the claim that the Church as a whole entered doctrinal extinction.
They all aligned themselves with Vatican II.
Therefore a state of necessity is called for in their cases. Sounds like you have drunk too much of the schismatic cool aid.
-
The SSPX aligned group Society of St. Josephat brought Latinizations into the Byzantine Liturgy that potentially harmed the Byzantine Tradition.
What Latinizations Look Like in Practice
Latinizations are not merely optional devotions or pious extras. In the context of the Society of St. Josaphat, they include:
A. Liturgical Additions Foreign to Byzantine Prayer
- Western-style genuflections at moments not prescribed in the Eastern rubrics.
- Introductory prayers and printed rubrical cues that resemble the Roman Missal rather than the Divine Liturgy.
- “Post-Communion thanksgiving” formulas that interrupt the liturgical flow of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
These changes may seem trivial in isolation, but cuмulatively they overwrite the internal logic of Eastern worship — where the liturgy itself is the primary locus of theological expression.
I'm not talking about the society of St. Josephat.
you need to keep up.
I'm talking about resistance Ukrainian Catholics separate to the Society of St. Josephat.
-
The End of the “State of Necessity”:
Do you believe that Vatican II is heretical? There is surely a large subset of R&R that don't think it is... just ambiguous, misleading, wordy, etc.
If you don't think Vatican II is actual heresy - then maybe your OP has some traction...
But,
If you do believe it is heretical (actually heretical like THIS (https://ia800508.us.archive.org/24/items/ThePrincipalHeresiesAndOthDalyJohnS.3335/The Principal Heresies and Oth - Daly%2C John S._3335.pdf)), then simply by accepting it (even with ZERO practical implementation/change) the Eastern Catholics would have wedded themselves to heresy.
"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. "
-
So the dilemma remains:
- If the Faith continued to exist somewhere in the Church, necessity cannot be universal.
- If necessity is not universal, it cannot justify permanent extraordinary measures.
Wrong. Per canon law, a necessity can be related to a variety of circuмstances and there is a LOT of leeway. Necessity is not based on some kind of "universal" catastrophe. Your argument fails.
This does not refute the SSPX critique of Vatican II.
It refutes the claim that the crisis justifies an open-ended emergency ecclesiology.
I hate the modern sspx, but the fact remains, that for Traditional catholics in the latin church, the crisis remains. Ergo, the necessity remains.
The problem isn’t that the Latin Rite was harmed.
It’s that harm to one rite does not equal the disappearance of the Church.
I've never heard ANYONE make the argument that the ENTIRE church was corrupted. Only that the latin church was corrupted, by V2.
And that distinction matters.
No, the distinction is related to the salvation of souls. If I, as an american, can ONLY get valid sacraments, in america, by going to a non-V2, Traditional, chapel, then i'll do it. That's the necessity. It doesn't help me that some Byzantine church 5,000 miles away, across multiple continents, still has the faith.
Canon law is clear that a necessity can be localized, or generally local, or even for an entire country. There are multiple canons which address this.
-
They all aligned themselves with Vatican II.
Therefore a state of necessity is called for in their cases. Sounds like you have drunk too much of the schismatic cool aid.
You’re conflating juridical alignment with doctrinal reception, and those are not the same thing — especially in the East.
“They aligned themselves with Vatican II” is a statement about canonical communion, not about what became believed. In Eastern Christianity, belief is not primarily transmitted by conciliar texts or episcopal press releases. It is transmitted by worship. That’s not a modern theory; it’s patristic Christianity.
If the Eastern Catholic Churches had truly received Vatican II’s contested errors as faith, you would see them expressed where Eastern theology actually lives:
- in the Divine Liturgy
- in the Creed as prayed
- in sacramental language
- in ascetical and catechetical formation
You don’t.
There is no liturgical profession of religious liberty as a right to error.
There is no prayer that relativizes Christ’s unique mediation.
There is no worship that treats false religions as salvific paths.
So the claim that “they all aligned themselves with Vatican II, therefore necessity exists” skips the essential question: aligned how?
A state of necessity does not arise because bishops signed docuмents. It arises only if the Faith as believed and lived disappears from the Church’s ordinary life. That never happened in the East — which is precisely why the Faith never vanished as such.
As for the “schismatic Kool-Aid” remark: pointing out that the Church preserved orthodox worship and belief within her visible structure is not schism. It’s the opposite. Schism begins when emergency measures are treated as normal and permanent, even after it’s clear the Church herself never ceased to exist.
You can maintain a critique of Vatican II without claiming that the Church’s life collapsed everywhere. Once you drop that collapse premise, an indefinite state of necessity stops being defensible.
That’s the point being made — nothing more.
-
Wrong. Per canon law, a necessity can be related to a variety of circuмstances and there is a LOT of leeway. Necessity is not based on some kind of "universal" catastrophe. Your argument fails.
I hate the modern sspx, but the fact remains, that for Traditional catholics in the latin church, the crisis remains. Ergo, the necessity remains.
I've never heard ANYONE make the argument that the ENTIRE church was corrupted. Only that the latin church was corrupted, by V2.
No, the distinction is related to the salvation of souls. If I, as an american, can ONLY get valid sacraments, in america, by going to a non-V2, Traditional, chapel, then i'll do it. That's the necessity. It doesn't help me that some Byzantine church 5,000 miles away, across multiple continents, still has the faith.
Canon law is clear that a necessity can be localized, or generally local, or even for an entire country. There are multiple canons which address this.
You’re still asserting something that is factually false, and that matters for the canon-law argument.
If I, as an American, can only get valid traditional sacraments in America by going to a pre-V2 church
“If I, as an American, can ONLY get valid sacraments in America by going to a non-V2 traditional chapel…”
That premise is simply untrue.
The Latin Rite is not “the Church in America.” The Catholic Church in America includes Byzantine, Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara, Armenian, and Coptic Catholic parishes, many of which:
- preserved orthodox theology
- preserved apostolic worship
- never reconstructed their liturgy
- never internalized Vatican II’s contested errors into prayer
These parishes exist in the United States, not “5,000 miles away.”
So the claim “I can only receive valid sacraments at SSPX-type chapels” is not a statement of necessity — it’s a statement of self-imposed restriction.
Canon law does not recognize chosen exclusion as necessity.
Once you admit that valid sacraments, orthodox worship, and apostolic life exist within the Church and within the same country, the necessity argument changes category. It can no longer justify:
- permanent extraordinary jurisdiction
- parallel hierarchies
- unauthorized episcopal acts
- an open-ended emergency ecclesiology
At most, it justifies temporary refuge based on conscience — not the normalization of exception.
And this brings us back to the core issue:
The crisis in the Latin Rite was real.
But the Church in America never disappeared.
Necessity explains why people fled burning buildings.
It does not justify pretending the entire city no longer exists.
That’s the distinction your argument refuses to face.
-
You’re conflating juridical alignment with doctrinal reception, and those are not the same thing — especially in the East.
“They aligned themselves with Vatican II” is a statement about canonical communion, not about what became believed. In Eastern Christianity, belief is not primarily transmitted by conciliar texts or episcopal press releases. It is transmitted by worship. That’s not a modern theory; it’s patristic Christianity.
If the Eastern Catholic Churches had truly received Vatican II’s contested errors as faith, you would see them expressed where Eastern theology actually lives:
- in the Divine Liturgy
- in the Creed as prayed
- in sacramental language
- in ascetical and catechetical formation
You don’t.
There is no liturgical profession of religious liberty as a right to error.
There is no prayer that relativizes Christ’s unique mediation.
There is no worship that treats false religions as salvific paths.
So the claim that “they all aligned themselves with Vatican II, therefore necessity exists” skips the essential question: aligned how?
A state of necessity does not arise because bishops signed docuмents. It arises only if the Faith as believed and lived disappears from the Church’s ordinary life. That never happened in the East — which is precisely why the Faith never vanished as such.
As for the “schismatic Kool-Aid” remark: pointing out that the Church preserved orthodox worship and belief within her visible structure is not schism. It’s the opposite. Schism begins when emergency measures are treated as normal and permanent, even after it’s clear the Church herself never ceased to exist.
You can maintain a critique of Vatican II without claiming that the Church’s life collapsed everywhere. Once you drop that collapse premise, an indefinite state of necessity stops being defensible.
That’s the point being made — nothing more.
There's nothing more annnoying them western latin rite people who have fallen in love with the east and think they can just invent their own moral theology.
I'm not conflating anything. You're not an intelligent person, posting on the internet, with zero humility. What a surprise.
What I said has nothing to do with east or west. Spirituality or charisms. Nothing.
It is a moral question of submission to conciliar authorities. Archbishop Lefevre was very clear about this after the consecrations. Which is why many easterns followed him.
You can waffle away all you want about the "spwituality" of the East. But it won't change moral law. It is above all Canon law and spirituality.
-
Do you believe that Vatican II is heretical? There is surely a large subset of R&R that don't think it is... just ambiguous, misleading, wordy, etc.
If you don't think Vatican II is actual heresy - then maybe your OP has some traction...
But,
If you do believe it is heretical (actually heretical like THIS (https://ia800508.us.archive.org/24/items/ThePrincipalHeresiesAndOthDalyJohnS.3335/The Principal Heresies and Oth - Daly%2C John S._3335.pdf)), then simply by accepting it (even with ZERO practical implementation/change) the Eastern Catholics would have wedded themselves to heresy.
"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. "
It’s very difficult for Latin Catholics to understand this, and it has been repeated here many times though ignored:
The manner of receiving Faith in the East is through Liturgical prayer. Lex orandi, lex credendi est. Vatican 2 has not been received by the Church because of this ancient rule of Faith.
If the East had “received” Vatican 2, it would be universal. The Catholics of the Eastern rite do not pray religious liberty into their creeds any more than they pray the Filioque in their creeds. They look at Vatican 2 exactly in the same way as they look at the Filioque. “Has it been received by the Church?” “Is the universal Church praying that doctrine?”
This is the hidden jewel of the crisis that most Latins have not yet discovered because it takes years to learn the East through it’s Liturgies and prayer life, which is it’s catechetical life.
-
I'm not talking about the society of St. Josephat.
you need to keep up.
I'm talking about resistance Ukrainian Catholics separate to the Society of St. Josephat.
That distinction doesn’t help you.
Whether it’s the Society of St. Josaphat or so-called “independent resistance” Ukrainian groups, the problem is the same: Latin crisis theology being smuggled into the Byzantine Rite under a different badge.
If you think the “resistance” groups are somehow immune to this, then name the concrete differences:
- What rubrics do they follow?
- What ascetical and catechetical tradition forms them?
- What prevents the same Latinizations from appearing once the SSPX logic is imported?
Because in practice, these groups replicate the same emergency ecclesiology, the same Western framing of doctrine, and the same impulse to ‘correct’ the East by Latin standards—just without admitting it.
If your argument is simply “they’re not St. Josaphat, therefore it’s different,” that’s not theology; that’s branding.
The Byzantine Rite doesn’t care which resistance label you wear.
It cares whether you let it remain Byzantine.
-
The manner of receiving Faith in the East is through Liturgical prayer. Lex orandi, lex credendi est. Vatican 2 has not been received by the Church because of this ancient rule of Faith.
One can have an Orthodox liturgy that is brimming with truly Catholic theology and all the bells, whistles, smells, capes, copes, lace, candles, etc., in the grandest spectacle this side of heaven...
But,
If at any time...
Such a one accepted heresy - EVEN if it was just in passing - i.e., signing their name to heretical docuмents is a public statement - without a public repudiation of the error, then they show themselves to be a slave to the same error.
Offering just ONE grain of incense to false gods constitutes apostasy. I think we can say that Vatican II offers much more than a single grain...
By their silence, the Easterners show they are embroiled in the same errors, thus the quotation,
*"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. " (*attributed to Pope Leo I )
You can maintain a critique of Vatican II without claiming that the Church’s life collapsed everywhere. Once you drop that collapse premise, an indefinite state of necessity stops being defensible.
That’s the point being made — nothing more.
So, you can see why I asked my question about Vatican II being heretical or not...
The level of the critique is essential to your argument.
If the level of the critique is anything along the lines of the Pope leading the whole council into heresy - then your whole point is defunct.
Because the Church’s life is rooted in the spiritual, it is possible to maintain an outward semblance of normalcy in the temporal order even while, spiritually, the rite itself has been emptied of its meaning.
Your position seems to share this in common with the Latin rite Indulters, IMO.
The ICKSP is a perfect example of this, all the lace, smells, bells, "signs of life", vocations, etc. But there... lurking in the corner of every ICKSP parish sanctuary is the demon of indifference and compromise with error.
The same demons all the Eastern Catholics also implicitly (or in some cases perhaps explicitly) accept by acknowledging the legitimacy of Vatican II and not speaking out against its errors/heresies.
-
One can have an Orthodox liturgy that is brimming with truly Catholic theology and all the bells, whistles, smells, capes, copes, lace, candles, etc., in the grandest spectacle this side of heaven...
But,
If at any time...
Such a one accepted heresy - EVEN if it was just in passing - i.e., signing their name to heretical docuмents is a public statement - without a public repudiation of the error, then they show themselves to be a slave to the same error.
Offering just ONE grain of incense to false gods constitutes apostasy. I think we can say that Vatican II offers much more than a single grain...
By their silence, the Easterners show they are embroiled in the same errors, thus the quotation,
*"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. " (*attributed to Pope Leo I )
So, you can see why I asked my question about Vatican II being heretical or not...
The level of the critique is essential to your argument.
If the level of the critique is anything along the lines of the Pope leading the whole council into heresy - then your whole point is defunct.
Because the Church’s life is rooted in the spiritual, it is possible to maintain an outward semblance of normalcy in the temporal order even while, spiritually, the rite itself has been emptied of its meaning.
Your position seems to share this in common with the Latin rite Indulters, IMO.
The ICKSP is a perfect example of this, all the lace, smells, bells, "signs of life", vocations, etc. But there... lurking in the corner of every ICKSP parish sanctuary is the demon of indifference and compromise with error.
The same demons all the Eastern Catholics also implicitly (or in some cases perhaps explicitly) accept by acknowledging the legitimacy of Vatican II and not speaking out against its errors/heresies.
Then your principle still destroys your own position.
If signing Vatican II docuмents = formal acceptance of heresy, then that rule applies universally. You don’t get to selectively enforce it.
Because Archbishop Lefebvre signed the Vatican II docuмents. That is a historical fact. He later critiqued them, qualified them, and eventually judged certain texts harmful — but he did sign them.
So either:
- Signing does not, by itself, constitute formal heresy
or - Lefebvre himself committed the same “incense to idols” act you’re accusing Eastern Catholics of.
You can’t escape that dilemma.
Now, here’s where your argument really collapses:
In the East, doctrine is not received by signatures or silence — it is received by worship. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church did not:
- alter its Creed
- insert Vatican II theology into the Divine Liturgy
- change sacramental theology
- reframe salvation, ecclesiology, or Christology in prayer
So even on your own terms, there is no formal act of heresy unless those errors are believed and professed — which, in the East, happens liturgically.
Calling Eastern Catholics heretics because they signed docuмents — while excusing Lefebvre for doing the same — isn’t theology. It’s selective moral reasoning.
If your rule condemns everyone except the people you already agree with, it isn’t a rule.
It’s a slogan.
-
Then your principle still destroys your own position.
If signing Vatican II docuмents = formal acceptance of heresy, then that rule applies universally. You don’t get to selectively enforce it.
Because Archbishop Lefebvre signed the Vatican II docuмents. That is a historical fact. He later critiqued them, qualified them, and eventually judged certain texts harmful — but he did sign them.
Yes he signed them.
Yes they were heretical.
My position is (and has been for a long time) that +Archbishop Lefebvre definitely had material heresies, and while I consider his signing of the docuмents to be a formal act of heresy in itself, I also see in his subsequent actions a desire to atone for that moment of weakness by speaking out and denouncing said error and heresy - something the Easterners never did...
Now, what this means for +Lefebvre's subsequent spiritual offspring and other acts as a bishop, is another matter...
I am not detecting any of the "selective moral reasoning" in the above.
I am not really clear then on how "my principle still destroys my own position."? Perhaps you thought I held him in higher esteem or did not know he signed the docuмents...
My position in regards to your OP claim is this, He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error."
The Easterners are all guilty of this - remaining silent - amidst the heresy and error.
They don't get to have their pretty liturgy and pretend the abomination of desolation isn't standing in the holy place. I mean, they can pretend if they choose to, but it changes nothing of the fact that they are aligned with the Vatican II Church agenda and explicitly accept all that is contained in the docuмents of the council.
Remember that the charge +Vigano was hit with was "schism for not accepting Vatican II". So if the Easterners did NOT accept Vatican II we would certainly have heard about many other excommunications such as +Vigano's from the Eastern clergy as well.
This we do not see. We do not see it simply because it is a fact that they all accepted Vatican II, they still accept it, and they have always accepted it. This may not be expressed in their liturgy (just like the ICKSP), but it is acknowledged as a fact by all sane people.
If the Eastern Catholic churches rejected Vatican II - were was all the commotion this dissent caused? They accepted it. They get to partake of it's sins all the same.
-
The faith is superior to all law and liturgy.
Our position of emergency jurisdiction is based on that.
Lefebvre did not sign DH.
-
Yes he signed them.
Yes they were heretical.
My position is (and has been for a long time) that +Archbishop Lefebvre definitely had material heresies, and while I consider his signing of the docuмents to be a formal act of heresy in itself, I also see in his subsequent actions a desire to atone for that moment of weakness by speaking out and denouncing said error and heresy - something the Easterners never did...
Now, what this means for +Lefebvre's subsequent spiritual offspring and other acts as a bishop, is another matter...
I am not detecting any of the "selective moral reasoning" in the above.
I am not really clear then on how "my principle still destroys my own position."? Perhaps you thought I held him in higher esteem or did not know he signed the docuмents...
My position in regards to your OP claim is this, He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error."
The Easterners are all guilty of this - remaining silent - amidst the heresy and error.
They don't get to have their pretty liturgy and pretend the abomination of desolation isn't standing in the holy place. I mean, they can pretend if they choose to, but it changes nothing of the fact that they are aligned with the Vatican II Church agenda and explicitly accept all that is contained in the docuмents of the council.
Remember that the charge +Vigano was hit with was "schism for not accepting Vatican II". So if the Easterners did NOT accept Vatican II we would certainly have heard about many other excommunications such as +Vigano's from the Eastern clergy as well.
This we do not see. We do not see it simply because it is a fact that they all accepted Vatican II, they still accept it, and they have always accepted it. This may not be expressed in their liturgy (just like the ICKSP), but it is acknowledged as a fact by all sane people.
If the Eastern Catholic churches rejected Vatican II - were was all the commotion this dissent caused? They accepted it. They get to partake of it's sins all the same.
Tom, that’s not a safe claim to make as a “fact.”
Multiple independent sources report that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre did sign Dignitatis humanae after voting against it (non placet) in the final vote — i.e., opposed it, then still added his signature to the promulgated text.
Yes, SSPX-adjacent apologias sometimes assert the opposite — e.g., claiming he “refused to sign.”
But that’s precisely why you don’t get to just declare it as settled: you need to produce the primary evidence for “he did not sign,” not repeat an internal talking point.
And even if you try to retreat to “he voted against it,” that doesn’t rescue your argument. Voting non placet is one question; signing the promulgated docuмent is another — and the dispute here is about the signature.
So pick one, clearly:
- If your standard is “signature = formal heresy,” then you have to deal with the reports that Lefebvre did sign DH.
- If you loosen the standard to allow for later repudiation/qualification, then your “Easterners are heretics because they didn’t denounce loudly enough” turns into a subjective purity test, not a theological principle.
Either way, the swagger doesn’t substitute for docuмentation.
Simple request: show the promulgation pages / signature registers / Acta evidence that he didn’t sign. Until then, your claim is disputed at best — and very likely wrong.
-
The faith is superior to all law and liturgy.
Our position of emergency jurisdiction is based on that.
Lefebvre did sign DH.
Faith being superior to law and liturgy, then inventing perpetual emergency law to save one rite is already proof the faith wasn’t lost elsewhere.
-
The eastern rite was given special protection. The cool kids got the right to skip detention while the rest of us act like an experimental rat stuck in it. :confused: I think I’d stay quiet too honestly and hope the rest of you caught on as to how to become a cool kid. Hahaha I got a Byzantine mission 4 minutes from my house. I think I’m going to go hang with the cool kids! Maybe it is a last refuge. If we flood it in big numbers will it remain that way?
-
My position is (and has been for a long time) that +Archbishop Lefebvre definitely had material heresies, and while I consider his signing of the docuмents to be a formal act of heresy in itself, I also see in his subsequent actions a desire to atone for that moment of weakness by speaking out and denouncing said error and heresy - something the Easterners never did...
The Easterners are all guilty of this - remaining silent - amidst the heresy and error.
They don't get to have their pretty liturgy and pretend the abomination of desolation isn't standing in the holy place. I mean, they can pretend if they choose to, but it changes nothing of the fact that they are aligned with the Vatican II Church agenda and explicitly accept all that is contained ….
If the Eastern Catholic churches rejected Vatican II - were was all the commotion this dissent caused? They accepted it. They get to partake of it's sins all the same.
Where the Latin-trad arrogance lies (and why it’s structural)
The arrogance is not mainly in calling others heretics.
It’s deeper than that.
The arrogance is the assumption that Latin categories are universal Catholic categories.
Specifically, the SSPX argument assumes:
- That doctrine is primarily transmitted by docuмents
- That ecclesial assent is primarily juridical and textual
- That silence = consent
- That signing = profession of faith
- That error lives first in propositions, not worship
- That Rome’s paper is where “the Church speaks”
Those assumptions are not Catholic simpliciter.
They are Latin post-medieval assumptions.
And they do not apply to the East.
How the Eastern Churches actually understand “receiving the faith”
Here is the crucial point you keep avoiding—and it’s important:
In Eastern Christianity,
the Church receives doctrine liturgically, not textually
This is not an excuse or a loophole.
It is how the Church functioned for the first millennium.
In the East:
- Councils are received over time
- Reception is measured by:
- changes to the liturgy
- changes to the Creed
- changes to sacramental language
- changes to ascetical and catechetical formation
- A council that is not prayed is not believed
- A text that does not alter worship does not alter faith
This is why lex orandi, lex credendi is not a slogan in the East—it is an operating principle.
Why Vatican II “means nothing” in the way SSPX critics think
When Eastern Catholics say Vatican II “did not change anything for us,” they are not saying:
“We agree with every line of Vatican 2”
They are saying:
“Nothing contrary to the apostolic faith entered our worship, so nothing entered our faith”.
That is the key distinction.
From an Eastern perspective:
- Vatican II did not alter the Divine Liturgy
- It did not alter the Creed
- It did not alter sacramental theology
- It did not alter the theology of salvation, Christ, or the Church as prayed
Therefore, it was not received as faith.
And in Eastern ecclesiology, what is not received as faith is not binding as belief—regardless of signatures.
Why “they must denounce Vatican II” is a category error
This is where the SSPX mindset becomes imperial.
To demand that Eastern Catholics “denounce Vatican II” assumes:
- That Vatican II entered their faith
- That they are obligated to respond to a Latin crisis
- That silence equals consent
- That denunciation is the normal mode of doctrinal clarity
But in the East:
- Error is rejected by non-reception, not polemic
- Orthodoxy is preserved by continuity of worship, not public statements
- The Church does not “clean itself” by press releases
From their perspective, demanding denunciation is like demanding a physician treat a disease the patient never had.
Why the Lefebvre comparison actually exposes the arrogance
The SSPX argument implicitly says:
“Archbishop Lefebvre understood the crisis and spoke out; therefore, he was faithful. The Easterners did not speak out; therefore, they are compromised.”
”
But this assumes the East was facing the same crisis.
They weren’t.
The crisis was:
- Latin
- self-inflicted
- rooted in liturgical reconstruction
- driven by Western theological trends
The East didn’t need to “atone” because it didn’t collapse.
So the arrogance is this:
Because we lost our liturgy and doctrine, you must protest our council—or else you’re guilty too.”
That is not Catholic universality.
That is projecting Latin failure onto the whole Church.
-
I’ve visited the Knoxville mission.
-
The Eastern Catholic Churches—Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian, among others—never abandoned:
- Apostolic liturgy
- Patristic theology
- Sacrificial worship
- Objective sacramental discipline
- A non-anthropocentric orientation to God
Liturgical Modernism (vernacularization, etc.) infected the Eastern rites as well, though there are some trad Easterners.
-
But in the East:
- Error is rejected by non-reception, not polemic
- Orthodoxy is preserved by continuity of worship, not public statements
It is a shame that the clergy of Constantinople didn't have you around to tell them no "public statements" were necessary concerning Nestorius because he had "preserved orthodoxy by continuity of worship."
If the Easterners had "non-received" the Council, then they would have said something.
The principle (you are arguing) that it is perfectly orthodox to remain silent amidst error when one has an obligation to speak is absurd.
We hear nothing from the Easterners about the, "heresies of Vatican II" simply because they have made their peace with those same heresies, and their 60 years of cricktish silence is damning proof that will echo for all eternity.
-
Liturgical Modernism (vernacularization, etc.) infected the Eastern rites as well, though there are some trad Easterners.
That’s not accurate. The Byzantine tradition has always been vernacular.
Greek was the vernacular of the Eastern Roman world. When the liturgy moved to the Slavs, it was translated into Old Church Slavonic, which was explicitly created as a vernacular liturgical language. The same is true for Arabic, Georgian, Syriac, etc.
So “vernacularization” in the Byzantine context is not a modernist reform — it’s how the rite has always functioned. There was no rupture analogous to the Latin Rite’s post-conciliar shift.
What would count as liturgical modernism in the East is not language, but:
- altering the structure of the Divine Liturgy
- removing sacrificial or ascetical elements
- anthropocentric re-framing of prayer
And those things, by and large, did not happen.
Equating Byzantine vernacular worship with Latin post-Vatican II vernacularization just shows unfamiliarity with the history of the Eastern rites.
-
Where the Latin-trad arrogance lies (and why it’s structural)
The arrogance is not mainly in calling others heretics.
It’s deeper than that.
The arrogance is the assumption that Latin categories are universal Catholic categories.
Specifically, the SSPX argument assumes:
- That doctrine is primarily transmitted by docuмents
- That ecclesial assent is primarily juridical and textual
- That silence = consent
- That signing = profession of faith
- That error lives first in propositions, not worship
- That Rome’s paper is where “the Church speaks”
Those assumptions are not Catholic simpliciter.
They are Latin post-medieval assumptions.
And they do not apply to the East.
How the Eastern Churches actually understand “receiving the faith”
Here is the crucial point you keep avoiding—and it’s important:
In Eastern Christianity,
the Church receives doctrine liturgically, not textually
This is not an excuse or a loophole.
It is how the Church functioned for the first millennium.
In the East:
- Councils are received over time
- Reception is measured by:
- changes to the liturgy
- changes to the Creed
- changes to sacramental language
- changes to ascetical and catechetical formation
- A council that is not prayed is not believed
- A text that does not alter worship does not alter faith
This is why lex orandi, lex credendi is not a slogan in the East—it is an operating principle.
Why Vatican II “means nothing” in the way SSPX critics think
When Eastern Catholics say Vatican II “did not change anything for us,” they are not saying:
“We agree with every line of Vatican 2”
They are saying:
“Nothing contrary to the apostolic faith entered our worship, so nothing entered our faith”.
That is the key distinction.
From an Eastern perspective:
- Vatican II did not alter the Divine Liturgy
- It did not alter the Creed
- It did not alter sacramental theology
- It did not alter the theology of salvation, Christ, or the Church as prayed
Therefore, it was not received as faith.
And in Eastern ecclesiology, what is not received as faith is not binding as belief—regardless of signatures.
Why “they must denounce Vatican II” is a category error
This is where the SSPX mindset becomes imperial.
To demand that Eastern Catholics “denounce Vatican II” assumes:
- That Vatican II entered their faith
- That they are obligated to respond to a Latin crisis
- That silence equals consent
- That denunciation is the normal mode of doctrinal clarity
But in the East:
- Error is rejected by non-reception, not polemic
- Orthodoxy is preserved by continuity of worship, not public statements
- The Church does not “clean itself” by press releases
From their perspective, demanding denunciation is like demanding a physician treat a disease the patient never had.
Why the Lefebvre comparison actually exposes the arrogance
The SSPX argument implicitly says:
“Archbishop Lefebvre understood the crisis and spoke out; therefore, he was faithful. The Easterners did not speak out; therefore, they are compromised.”
”
But this assumes the East was facing the same crisis.
They weren’t.
The crisis was:
- Latin
- self-inflicted
- rooted in liturgical reconstruction
- driven by Western theological trends
The East didn’t need to “atone” because it didn’t collapse.
So the arrogance is this:
Because we lost our liturgy and doctrine, you must protest our council—or else you’re guilty too.”
That is not Catholic universality.
That is projecting Latin failure onto the whole Church.
AI slop
The Latin Church did not "lose" Her doctrine or liturgy, go to a trad mass and there it is. Are you even reading what the AI is spitting out?
As for what your retarded AI has to say about the Eastern Catholics not being compelled to say anything about or fight the V2 heresies, here is St. Theodore of Studium (Byzantine Greek, 8-9th Century):
Since it is the Lord's commandment that we should not be silent when faith is in danger. For He says: speak and be not silent; and "If he retreat, my soul is not pleased with him" (Heb 10:38); and "If they keep silent, the stones will cry aloud" (Lk 19:40). So, when it comes to faith, we cannot say: who am I? Am I a priest? No. Lord? Neither. A soldier? From where? Farmer? Not even that. I am poor, providing only my daily food. I have no reason, no interest in the matter. Alas! The stones will cry out, and you remain silent and indifferent? The insensitive nature obeys God, and you remain indifferent? That which has no soul nor answers to the court, fearing in some way the command, yells, and you who are to answer to God in the time of judgment even for a word unprofitable (cf. Mt 12:36), even if you are a beggar, say thoughtlessly: What do I care for it? "These things," says Paul, "I have applied to myself and to Apollos for your sake, that you may be taught by our example, that you may take no more heed than what is written" (1 Cor. 4, 16); so that even the poor man in the day of judgment will have no excuse if he does not speak now, for he will be judged for this alone. And of course none of those who were on high will be excluded, not even the ones wearing the crown. And their condemnation will be the highest there is. For it is said, "The mighty shall be judged more severely" (Wis. Sol. 6:6); and, "A terrible sentence shall be inflicted on the rulers" (Wis. Sol. 6:5). Speak, then, sir, speak. Wherefore I also, a poor fellow, for fear of the court, speak
.
-
The Latin Church did not "lose" Her doctrine or liturgy
The SSPX position is that the entire Latin Church with legal jurisdiction did lose their liturgy and doctrine. In fact, the argument here is that by them holding that position and the “state of necessity” position that comes from it, the Eastern churches by existing prove that this is wrong.
Arguing after skimming just exposes how little of the argument you understand.
-
Since it is the Lord's commandment that we should not be silent when faith is in danger. For He says: speak and be not silent; and "If he retreat, my soul is not pleased with him" (Heb 10:38); and "If they keep silent, the stones will cry aloud" (Lk 19:40). So, when it comes to faith, we cannot say: who am I? Am I a priest? No. Lord? Neither. A soldier? From where? Farmer? Not even that. I am poor, providing only my daily food. I have no reason, no interest in the matter. Alas! The stones will cry out, and you remain silent and indifferent? The insensitive nature obeys God, and you remain indifferent? That which has no soul nor answers to the court, fearing in some way the command, yells, and you who are to answer to God in the time of judgment even for a word unprofitable (cf. Mt 12:36), even if you are a beggar, say thoughtlessly: What do I care for it? "These things," says Paul, "I have applied to myself and to Apollos for your sake, that you may be taught by our example, that you may take no more heed than what is written" (1 Cor. 4, 16); so that even the poor man in the day of judgment will have no excuse if he does not speak now, for he will be judged for this alone. And of course none of those who were on high will be excluded, not even the ones wearing the crown. And their condemnation will be the highest there is. For it is said, "The mighty shall be judged more severely" (Wis. Sol. 6:6); and, "A terrible sentence shall be inflicted on the rulers" (Wis. Sol. 6:5). Speak, then, sir, speak. Wherefore I also, a poor fellow, for fear of the court, speak
St. Theodore the Studite is being invoked out of context and against his own ecclesial world.
St. Theodore was resisting an explicit, enforced heresy that was imposed on the Church’s worship itself (Iconoclasm). Icons were destroyed, veneration was forbidden, monks were coerced, and the public prayer of the Church was altered to deny a dogma. That is why silence was impossible: the faith was being attacked at the level of liturgy.
That is precisely the opposite of the Eastern Catholic situation after Vatican II.
Nothing heretical was imposed on Eastern worship:
- the Divine Liturgy was not rewritten
- the Creed was not altered
- iconography was not suppressed
- sacramental theology was not redefined in prayer
So the Studite principle actually cuts against your argument, not for it.
In the Byzantine tradition, one “speaks” for the faith by preserving the received worship intact. When the liturgy remains orthodox, silence is not cowardice—it is non-reception. There is no obligation to denounce a doctrinal error that was never imposed on your Church’s prayer in the first place.
Appealing to St. Theodore to demand Latin-style polemics from the East is anachronistic. He fought when the liturgy itself was corrupted. The East did not experience that corruption.
So no—the Eastern Catholics are not “silent in the face of heresy.”
They simply never accepted it where faith actually lives.
-
More AI slop. According to Centroamerica, and his AI, the only time Eastern Catholics must combat heresy is when it is implemented in the Liturgy. Any other time? Who cares! Incredible :incense:
-
More AI slop. According to Centroamerica, and his AI, the only time Eastern Catholics must combat heresy is when it is implemented in the Liturgy. Any other time? Who cares! Incredible :incense:
That’s not what’s being argued, and you know it.
No one is saying Eastern Christians “only care” if heresy appears in the liturgy. The point is that in Eastern Christianity, the reception of doctrine happens through worship, not through polemics, press statements, or juridical docuмents. That’s descriptive, not dismissive.
When heresy was imposed on Eastern worship (e.g., Iconoclasm), Eastern saints fought it openly and at great cost. When it is not imposed, non-reception is not indifference — it’s how the Church has always guarded the faith.
Disagree if you want, but don’t replace the argument with a caricature. That doesn’t advance the discussion.
-
Take note: If your group shakes hands with Rome, shakes hands with the dioceses: all parishes have been restructured. Google and read: what is meant by catholic restructure? Half of all churches, schools will be closed, or sold. The so-called priests will be cut in half. One priest to 3-4 civil society organizations, no longer parishes.
What is a civil society organization? CSO's answer to the United nations.
So, do your homework and see where your group is?
Coalition for cancelled priest, is a group that knew beforehand that this would happen. They are not priest (after 1968). So there is one lie. This group then had on billboards, "We want to be reinstated". Another lie. Then Mel Gibson gave the group $1. million to get them a home in Indianapolis area.
-
That’s not what’s being argued, and you know it.
No one is saying Eastern Christians “only care” if heresy appears in the liturgy. The point is that in Eastern Christianity, the reception of doctrine happens through worship, not through polemics, press statements, or juridical docuмents. That’s descriptive, not dismissive.
When heresy was imposed on Eastern worship (e.g., Iconoclasm), Eastern saints fought it openly and at great cost. When it is not imposed, non-reception is not indifference — it’s how the Church has always guarded the faith.
Disagree if you want, but don’t replace the argument with a caricature. That doesn’t advance the discussion.
Right, so what are the implications of the patriarchs, metropolitans, major Archbishops of the Eastern Churches, or the representatives for them, being present and participating in the Novus Ordo inauguration mass of Leo XIV?
Is attending and giving consent to a sacrilegious, non-Catholic rite, celebrated by a heretic that they profess to be in communion with OK so long as it wasn't their Liturgy being infringed upon?
-
Right, so what are the implications of the patriarchs, metropolitans, major Archbishops of the Eastern Churches, or the representatives for them, being present and participating in the Novus Ordo inauguration mass of Leo XIV?
Is attending and giving consent to a sacrilegious, non-Catholic rite, celebrated by a heretic that they profess to be in communion with OK so long as it wasn't their Liturgy being infringed upon?
Pres
Presence at a Roman rite is not doctrinal submission, and non-reception through unchanged worship is not consent. You’re applying Latin polemical assumptions to an Eastern ecclesiology that has never worked that way.
-
Pres
Presence at a Roman rite is not doctrinal submission, and non-reception through unchanged worship is not consent. You’re applying Latin polemical assumptions to an Eastern ecclesiology that has never worked that way.
Roman rite? Huh? Were talking about a non-Catholic, sacrilegious rite. Run that through your AI
-
The Byzantine tradition has always been vernacular.
They (besides the Roumanians) have all traditionally used an older language.
Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (https://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=2955) (1902), § "The Language Used in the Celebration of the Holy Mass (https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Non-Vatican%20docuмents/language_gihr.pdf)":At present [1902] there are twelve languages used in the Catholic liturgy; namely, 1. Latin, 2. Greek, 3. Syriac, 4. Chaldaic, 5. Arabian, 6. Ethiopian, 7. Glagolitic, 8. Ruthenian, 9. Bulgarian, 10. Armenian, 11. Coptic, 12. Romanian. With the exception of Romanian, all these languages used in the liturgy have for a considerable time no longer been the living languages of the people, but only dead languages. The united Roumanians alone make use of the living mother-tongue in the liturgy; this is not expressly permitted by Rome, but is merely tolerated.
-
Right, so what are the implications of the patriarchs, metropolitans, major Archbishops of the Eastern Churches, or the representatives for them, being present and participating in the Novus Ordo inauguration mass of Leo XIV?
Is attending and giving consent to a sacrilegious, non-Catholic rite, celebrated by a heretic that they profess to be in communion with OK so long as it wasn't their Liturgy being infringed upon?
Presence at a Roman rite is not doctrinal submission, and non-reception through unchanged worship is not consent. You’re applying Latin polemical assumptions to an Eastern ecclesiology that has never worked that way.
I just want to point out that I was SSPX before the 1988 consecrations, longtime forum members will remember my international closeness to the resistance and their episcopal consecrations. Others will remember my support for Bishop Da Silva. My views of the East are the only views expressed here. I have not spoken ill of Archbishop Lefebvre and I have no issue with an SSPX mass.
I also want to say that presence at a Novus Ordo concelebration or any of those ideas I am not comfortable with as myself being baptized Catholic, I have never attended a New Mass. My point here I wish to make, again, is that the East is protected because of its heritage and inherent protection mechanisms. The conclusion could be made that the Church did not defect for this reason, as it could not anyway.
Let’s amplify that…
Presence ≠ doctrinal consent
Eastern patriarchs being present at a Roman papal inauguration does not mean:
- endorsement of every theological opinion of the pope
- endorsement of the Novus Ordo as a normative expression of faith for the East
- endorsement of Vatican II’s disputed interpretations
In Eastern ecclesiology, communion is not expressed the same way as in Latin polemics. Presence is diplomatic and ecclesial, not confessional. The East has always distinguished between:
- communion (shared faith and sacraments)
- administration (who governs which church)
- ritual expression (how the faith is prayed)
The SSPX argument quietly assumes a Latin juridical model and then condemns the East for not behaving like Latins.
2. “Sacrilegious, non-Catholic rite” is an assertion, not a premise
Calling the Novus Ordo “sacrilegious and non-Catholic” is the SSPX’s conclusion, one I will agree with, but it’s not something the Eastern Churches are obliged to accept in order to remain Catholic.
From the Eastern perspective:
- They are not competent judges of the Roman rite
- They did not receive the Novus Ordo as their own
- They did not incorporate its theology into their worship
So the question “why did they attend?” assumes the East shares the SSPX’s judgment before the argument has even been proven.
That’s classic begging the question.
3. The East does not believe faith is preserved by denunciations
This is the deepest misunderstanding.
In the Byzantine tradition, faith is preserved by:
- continuity of worship
- unchanged sacramental life
- patristic theology embedded in prayer
Not by issuing condemnations every time Rome publishes a docuмent.
When heresy is imposed on worship (Iconoclasm, monothelitism), the East fights publicly and ferociously.
When it is not imposed, the East practices non-reception, which is an ancient and legitimate ecclesial response.
Silence here is not approval — it is refusal to internalize.
4. Why this argument feels arrogant (and is)
The underlying claim is this:
“Unless you fight Vatican 2 the way we do, using our categories, you are guilty.”
That’s not Catholicity. That’s Latin absolutism dressed up as traditionalism.
It reduces the Eastern Churches to:
- spectators of Latin crises
- moral cowards unless they adopt SSPX polemics
- “pretty liturgy” with no theological agency
Historically false. Theologically incoherent.
-
AI slop. Not reading that. The "heads" of the Eastern Churches, or their representatives, were present and participated in the non-Catholic, sacrilegious, Novus Ordo inauguration mass of Leo XIV (and presumably every Novus Ordo inauguration mass of the Conciliar Popes).
-
AI slop. Not reading that. The "heads" of the Eastern Churches, or their representatives, were present and participated in the non-Catholic, sacrilegious, Novus Ordo inauguration mass of Leo XIV (and presumably every Novus Ordo inauguration mass of the Conciliar Popes).
Sticking your fingers in your ears is the fastest way to not hear the Truth.
It’s also a good method when
-your argument is falling apart
-reason and logic are not on your side
-all your half truths are systematically exposed.
The fact of the matter is that the Eastern rite Churches
-hold the entirety of the Catholic Faith
- have a real Patristic history with balanced Catholic resistance that supersedes the history of Archbishop Lefebvre by millenia
and especially…
-have the authentic Nicene Creed in their Mass (Divine Liturgy)
Here’s the thing…you can claim this posts is AI (which it is not), refuse to read it. And make half-hearted accusations and ad hominems, but the Truth remains. I’ll tone it down here to get my point across.
The Latin Church is a source of problems for Catholic unity because it’s always trying to industrialize the Faith.
But ambiguity inserted into the Nicene Creed and then prayed in the Latin rite is what led me here. The Creed in the Latin rite is not the Nicene Creed formulated at the Council of Nicene, even if the name states otherwise. That Creed is found in the Byzantine rite unaltered and without ambiguity.
The answer to the crisis in Faith and crisis of masculinity in the priesthood can be found in the Ancient East, where it has always been.
-
Someone had mentioned that the Latin rite was 99.9 percent of the Church. People will make up and post anything that comes to mind.
If you come objectively to Cath Info, those of lesser learning always grow defensive, bitter and sometimes disrespectful (a microcosm this thread, in that sense). It’s been that way since 2012. It’s just part of any system where Faith is defensive and crisis based, as well as competitive. All found deeply rooted in the Latin rite Faith. If there were a crisis of Modernism in the Church, it’s clear to see which Rite would be most prone to such a crisis. It’s a reflection of the people and the people are a reflection of the culture. The Latin rite is arguably the most beautiful Rite of the Church. But the development of the mindset of Western Christianity is very different from that of the East.
This is why I restate Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi est ad nauseam. But the Latin Rite Church is like “but does it have an imprimatur before 1958?”.
The East truly holds the answer to the crisis.
-
They (besides the Roumanians) have all traditionally used an older language.
Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (https://isidore.co/calibre/#panel=book_details&book_id=2955) (1902), § "The Language Used in the Celebration of the Holy Mass (https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Non-Vatican%20docuмents/language_gihr.pdf)":
You’re missing the point Gihr is actually making.
Those languages were living when adopted. They were not dead languages. They became sacralized because the liturgy was preserved, not because the Church kept chasing whatever people spoke next. That’s the opposite of post-Vatican II vernacularization.
The Byzantine Churches didn’t switch languages by policy, theory, or pastoral ideology. They evangelized in a language, fixed it in worship, and then refused to tinker with it. That’s why Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian, etc. fossilized liturgically while spoken language moved on.
So no, citing that these languages later became “dead” doesn’t refute anything. It confirms the Eastern principle: once received into worship, the faith is guarded by stability, not constant adaptation.
That’s precisely why Vatican II–style vernacular reform never translated into Eastern liturgical change.
-
The East truly holds the answer to the crisis.
Yes.
That is, if their answer is to remain silent in the face of apostasy, heresy, and schism, then yes, "The East truly holds the answer..."
"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. " - Pope Leo I
If the East wanted to demonstrate in real-time what Pope Leo I was saying above, they nailed it!
-
Yes.
That is, if their answer is to remain silent in the face of apostasy, heresy, and schism, then yes, "The East truly holds the answer..."
"He who does not call others back from error when he can, demonstrates that he himself is in error. " - Pope Leo I
If the East wanted to demonstrate in real-time what Pope Leo I was saying above, they nailed it!
Vatican 2 did not re-write the Nicene Creed and then try to stick it into their Divine Liturgy. That was done before Vatican 2 by the Latin Rite Church. It altered its own Liturgy by re-writing a different Creed and attaching it to its Mass and telling the world it was Nicene.
The Latin Church alters its form of worship and its Creeds at will. Then when called out about it provokes schisms. Instead of expecting the Byzantine Church to clean up the Latin rite’s V2 mess, how about a little accountability.
Silence at this point is the most prudent. The test of time will prove which Rite survives the future Church.
-
Silence at this point is the most prudent.
No.
It is a simple affirmation of their complicity in the revolution.
They can keep all their chants and incense, they don't stand up for the faith, so they are to be lumped in with the traitors.
-
Centroamerica, are (were) you not a Sedevacantist?
-
Sounds like he's on his way to the Orthodox. Time to dust off those Kallistos Ware books...
-
Centroamerica, are (were) you not a Sedevacantist?
I was born into SSPX circles. Attended Mass regularly at the seminary in Winona when the resistance had it’s hot summer and Fr. Pfeifer showed up.
In Latin America I got very close to the resistance, Bishop Williamson and his bishops.
In 2017 I moved back to the States with my wife and started attending at a CMRI church. At the same time as that was happening, Fr. Rodrigo has a providential meeting with Bishop Daniel Dolan. I visited SGG, met Fr. Cekada and Bishop Dolan. Attended two episcopal consecrations at St. Gertrude the Great.
Fr. Hesse and the priests at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary had a huge impression on my formation. As I grew up in SSPX circles, I always made it a point to understand the arguments and the crisis. The SSPX and groups in line with them held a belief regarding formal/material heresy. Fr. Hesse articulated this the best and promised he would become a sedevacantist if the pope ever canonized Martin Luther.
After Bergoglio, that position was quietly discarded. Then, suddenly, books began being written in multiple languages arguing in favor of the possibility of a heretic pope. Catholic Canon Law of 1917 canon 188 cites explicitly cuм Ex Apostolatus, but Latin Rite Catholics use deception to promote their clique.
I kept analyzing positions and seeing what group kept everything authentic.
When I discovered the protections built into the Byzantine Church, I realized its power over the crisis.
I looked into its theology and pysche.
Then I noticed something I had questioned and needed to find the answer.
Why does every Divine Liturgy “missal” have a page taped over the Nicene Creed?
Then, I realized, everything Traditionalists Latin Catholics tell us about the East is wrong.
-
Someone had mentioned that the Latin rite was 99.9 percent of the Church. People will make up and post anything that comes to mind.
I said that but it looks like I was off by about 1%. According to AI -
(https://i.imgur.com/dgJsPbD.png)
-
2. The Easterns have all accepted Vatican II and "reforms" to their liturgy.
This.
Something so fundamental couldn't have been missed by thousands of "Traditional Catholic Movement" pioneers, priests, bishops, etc. over the past FIFTY FIVE YEARS.
Whoever wrote that article is extremely high on himself. "Everyone but me is stupid." The type of guy who is cool with being the only smart guy, one of the only true Catholics left, etc. It takes a lot of pride to be willing and able to go to such a place.
-
This.
Something so fundamental couldn't have been missed by thousands of "Traditional Catholic Movement" pioneers, priests, bishops, etc. over the past FIFTY FIVE YEARS.
Whoever wrote that article is extremely high on himself. "Everyone but me is stupid." The type of guy who is cool with being the only smart guy, one of the only true Catholics left, etc. It takes a lot of pride to be willing and able to go to such a place.
Operation Survival was to save the Latin Rite Mass. The part you seem to be agreeing with, that the Liturgies of the Byzantine rite have been altered with Modernism because of Vatican 2, that is substantially false. I would ask you to investigate for yourself. And if you still have that conclusion, bring it and its facts to the debate table.
You or any Latin Rite Resistance priest or bishop. Their arguments do not hold water if you truly learn the East, which takes a lifetime.
-
Operation Survival was to save the Latin Rite Mass. The part you seem to be agreeing with, that the Liturgies of the Byzantine rite have been altered with Modernism because of Vatican 2, that is substantially false. I would ask you to investigate for yourself. And if you still have that conclusion, bring it and its facts to the debate table.
You or any Latin Rite Resistance priest or bishop. Their arguments do not hold water if you truly learn the East, which takes a lifetime.
Operation survival was to save the sacraments and the faith.
Those who wanted just the TLM became the Fraternity of St. Peter.
You are so ignorant of the history here, its painful.
-
Something so fundamental couldn't have been missed by thousands of "Traditional Catholic Movement" pioneers, priests, bishops, etc. over the past FIFTY FIVE YEARS.
This just confirms for me what I wanted to know. I am early. Not to say there hasn’t been a falling in love with the Eastern rites by Trads already. But they haven’t discovered in a 2007 sense, thankfully.
What I am saying Matthew, is that I am early. And I can’t wait for the Sean Johnson’s out there to catch up.
When Trads see how fragmented, petty and divisive the Latin rite clergy have really become, with open eyes and discover the truth about the Byzantine Liturgy and Church history, the tide will change.
The Solemn High Mass of the Latin Rite Liturgy is probably the most beautiful expression of the Mass, but its priests have a problem with division, effeminacy and arrogance. I sincerely believe the East can heal the Church.
-
Operation survival was to save the sacraments and the faith.
Those who wanted just the TLM became the Fraternity of St. Peter.
You are so ignorant of the history here, its painful.
The Faith never needed to be saved by Latin Trad cats. That is the truth you cannot see.
-
Operation Survival was to save the Latin Rite Mass. The part you seem to be agreeing with, that the Liturgies of the Byzantine rite have been altered with Modernism because of Vatican 2, that is substantially false. I would ask you to investigate for yourself. And if you still have that conclusion, bring it and its facts to the debate table.
You or any Latin Rite Resistance priest or bishop. Their arguments do not hold water if you truly learn the East, which takes a lifetime.
Operation Survival was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s definitive act to preserve the Catholic Faith intact by rejecting any canonical recognition from Modernist Rome conditioned - explicitly or implicitly - upon acceptance of the Second Vatican Council, even “with reservations,” and by consecrating bishops to ensure the uninterrupted transmission of Catholic Tradition without compromise.
-
1. Archbishop Lefebvre's saintly life, led by Providence, was about preserving the Catholic Faith, not just the "Latin Mass"
2. The fact that God personally formed and chose a Roman Rite bishop to be His instrument shows that the Roman Rite has a special role to play in the preservation of the Faith during the current Crisis in the Church.
-
You or any Latin Rite Resistance priest or bishop. Their arguments do not hold water if you truly learn the East, which takes a lifetime.
That is insane to me.
We're not talking about timeless things like Truth, Goodness or Beauty -- but "East". Guess what? I'm not from the East. I'm 100% Western. I grew up at a Traditional Catholic (Roman Rite) chapel. I am a native born American citizen, born in the Midwest. My heritage is Irish and German, and other misc. European. NO PART OF ME is Eastern.
God doesn't expect hippos to live among hyenas, and He doesn't expect me to join some culture that is 100% foreign to me -- as a requirement of keeping my Faith.
Why do you think I'm pro-Roman Rite? Because I was surfing the web and clicked that link instead of the Eastern Rite link next to it? NO!
I was RAISED that way by my elders -- my parents, teachers, uncles, etc. The way God designed it. Faith comes by hearing. And physical, human teachers are the way God intended for us to learn. It's why He gave us parents.
Saying things like "learn the East" that "takes a lifetime" reeks of fetishizing the East, which so many white men have done. Some have gone overseas to find spouses, others to pursue their curiosity (various Eastern medicine, philosophy, martial arts, etc.) But in the end, it's just a fetish. It's kind of crazy when you stop and think about it. Behold the 6 foot tall, or muscular/stocky middle aged white guy hanging out in Thailand with a bunch of short skinny Asians, pretending to be Asian. And white guys can be smart, so they do a good job of learning the language and culture. But what went wrong? Why did he reject his own culture and identity? What crisis happened in the man's life, to make him change his "identity" so drastically? In the end, regardless of the circuмstances, It's not natural or normal.
-
That is insane to me.
We're not talking about timeless things like Truth, Goodness or Beauty -- but "East". Guess what? I'm not from the East. I'm 100% Western. I grew up at a Traditional Catholic (Roman Rite) chapel. I am a native born American citizen, born in the Midwest. My heritage is Irish and German, and other misc. European. NO PART OF ME is Eastern.
God doesn't expect hippos to live among hyenas, and He doesn't expect me to join some culture that is 100% foreign to me -- as a requirement of keeping my Faith.
Why do you think I'm pro-Roman Rite? Because I was surfing the web and clicked that link instead of the Eastern Rite link next to it? NO!
I was RAISED that way by my elders -- my parents, teachers, uncles, etc. The way God designed it.
Saying things like "learn the East" that "takes a lifetime" reeks of fetishizing the East, which so many white men have done. Some have gone overseas to find spouses, others to pursue their curiosity (various Eastern medicine, philosophy, martial arts, etc.) But in the end, it's just a fetish. It's kind of crazy when you stop and think about it. Behold the 6 foot tall, or muscular/stocky middle aged white guy hanging out in Thailand with a bunch of short skinny Asians, pretending to be Asian. And white guys can be smart, so they do a good job of learning the language and culture. But what went wrong? Why did he reject his own culture and identity? What crisis happened in the man's life, to make him change his "identity" so drastically? In the end, regardless of the circuмstances, It's not natural or normal.
Matthew, I know you are a balanced thinker, and I’m going to answer this plainly and honestly, not rhetorically.
When I say “learn the East,” I am not talking about ethnicity, race, fetish, cosplay, or identity substitution, and I think you know that. I am talking about an ecclesial tradition with its own theological grammar, historical memory, and mode of receiving doctrine that is not interchangeable with the Latin resistance framework you and I were both formed in. This has nothing to do with rejecting one’s culture, and everything to do with recognizing that the Catholic Church is not identical to the post-Tridentine Latin experience, especially in how crises are endured.
I am not Eastern by blood, language, or upbringing either. I was raised in the same Latin resistance ecosystem you were, and I took it seriously enough to live inside it, test it, and push its claims to their logical conclusions. What broke my confidence was not attraction to novelty or aesthetics, but the realization that Latin resistance arguments quietly universalize a very specific Western crisis psychology and then judge the rest of the Church by whether it mirrors that posture.
The East does not defend the faith primarily through denunciatory docuмents, polemical manifestos, or juridical theories of emergency. Historically it never has. It preserves doctrine through continuity of worship, ascetical theology, episcopal praxis, and above all through what it refuses to absorb. That is not silence as indifference. That is non-reception as a lived ecclesial act. Those two things are not morally or theologically identical.
Calling this fetishization misses the point entirely. I am not saying the East is superior because it is exotic. I am saying it exposes the limits of a Latin resistance model that assumes the only faithful response to crisis is constant public condemnation in a particular register. That assumption is not catholic. It is cultural.
You ask why someone would “reject his own culture.” I am not rejecting the West. I am rejecting the idea that Western modes of crisis management are the sole measure of fidelity. The Church survived Arianism, monothelitism, iconoclasm, and imperial coercion largely through endurance, non-assimilation, and liturgical fidelity, not through every bishop issuing constant denunciations on demand.
If the Eastern Churches had truly accepted doctrinal rupture, you would see it prayed, catechized, and sacramentally enacted. You do not. Their liturgy did not absorb Vatican II’s ambiguities. Their theology did not internalize Latin innovations. Their moral life did not collapse into pastoral experimentation. That matters more than press conferences or public statements.
This is not escapism. It is not identity play. It is recognizing that the Catholic Church is larger than the Latin crisis and older than our arguments about it. I am not asking you to become Eastern. I am asking you to acknowledge that your framework is not exhaustive, and that fidelity does not always wear the same armor.
If that sounds uncomfortable, it should. Crises always expose the limits of our categories.
-
I also would like to have a sane balanced discussion of the matter.
A few points:
1. How could God, you, or anyone else expect me to operate outside the framework, culture, and way of looking at the world that I was formed in? How am I supposed to magically replace my very BIOS, my Operating system, plus all the software that's been installed on me over the past half-century? That is not reasonable to expect. You're not talking about learning a new trick, but a new way of criticism, a new way of thinking, a new worldview, being Eastern instead of Western, etc. That is not a small change, like learning a new language. Again, I would say that is NOT NATURAL.
2. There is question of what you mean by doing the "Traditional Catholic" thing. Specifically, the more bitter zeal variety, vs. the "keep the Faith" and be holy variety. There are a lot of Trads who can't see the forest for the trees, and I wouldn't be surprised if that led to nothing good -- including giving up on the Traditional Movement.
I would wager you haven't been in the best Traditional Catholic circles, and/or you're disillusioned with what you've seen, having moved beyond the ideals and seen a lot of "how the sausage is made" and discovered the "warts and all" -- hoping that the East isn't as bad. But someday you might become disillusioned with the East, and then heaven help you. Beware the long-game of the devil... he just wants to get you, he doesn't care how...
3. You seem to contrast the Roman Rite as being bitter and denouncing, vs. the East just "keeping the liturgy pristine" and "busy over here staying Catholic". Well guess what? My Traditional Catholic chapel is "just keeping the Faith" as well. Our liturgy is 100% consonant with the Catholic Faith, with no corruptions or Modernism. So what advantage do the Eastern Rites have again?
4. As for where our salvation will ultimately come from -- you are welcome to your opinion, as this is classic "doubtful matter". Anything touching on the Crisis is automatically doubtful and NOT dogmatic.
As God is the author of Nature, and God cannot contradict Himself, I can't imagine a world where we're expected to "change our spots" and become something completely other, in order to restore the Church and/or keep the Faith. God isn't going to require the impossible, or the unnatural.
-
Are you sure you want to include the Maronite as one of your ideals? They are extremely liberal. Their churches look like typical average Novus Ordo, with banners and all.
Here is a screenshot from a Maronite church in San Antonio.
Nice how the "youth minister" is a woman, as well as the choir director. Funny how the Maronites also fall under the American curse of "boys don't sing" -- even though that isn't true pretty much everywhere else in the world -- including Lebanon, which is where the Maronites are from ;)
Next photo:
Note they call him "St. John Paul II". That shows how liberal and Modernist-infected they are.
Also note where the church's parishioners came from -- "Lebanon and middle eastern countries". Which is understandable for them. But not for a white boy born in the Midwest USA to a Roman Rite Trad Catholic family.
-
Are you sure you want to include the Maronite as one of your ideals? They are extremely liberal. Their churches look like typical average Novus Ordo, with banners and all.
Here is a screenshot from a Maronite church in San Antonio.
Nice how the "youth minister" is a woman, as well as the choir director. Funny how the Maronites also fall under the American curse of "boys don't sing" -- even though that isn't true pretty much everywhere else in the world -- including Lebanon, which is where the Maronites are from ;)
Next photo:
Note they call him "St. John Paul II". That shows how liberal and Modernist-infected they are.
Also note where the church's parishioners came from -- "Lebanon and middle eastern countries". Which is understandable for them. But not for a white boy born in the Midwest USA to a Roman Rite Trad Catholic family.
I’m aware of the Maronites being liberal. There’s all kinds of craziness out there. I was talking about the protections I experienced in the Byzantine. I should not conflate the East with the Byzantine rite.
-
I had so many points to make, I forgot the most important one!
5. You seem to be giving up on the Traditional Movement. You are making the same error as Bishop Fellay, worrying about the future, "how we can continue fighting as we have been", feeling like you can't fight much longer, and losing heart.
Bp. Fellay actually said this explicitly. He said we are going to end up like the Old Catholics if we don't change course and do something different.
Your path (I read your pedigree/bio a couple pages back) and to some that might seem extremely well-rounded. But to me, I think maybe you got poisoned by the *kind of* sedevacantists you were hanging out with.
-
Some of the Rites out of India are probably worse. I’m really just talking Byzantine versus Latin.
-
I also would like to have a sane balanced discussion of the matter.
A few points:
1. How could God, you, or anyone else expect me to operate outside the framework, culture, and way of looking at the world that I was formed in? How am I supposed to magically replace my very BIOS, my Operating system, plus all the software that's been installed on me over the past half-century? That is not reasonable to expect. You're not talking about learning a new trick, but a new way of criticism, a new way of thinking, a new worldview, being Eastern instead of Western, etc. That is not a small change, like learning a new language. Again, I would say that is NOT NATURAL.
2. There is question of what you mean by doing the "Traditional Catholic" thing. Specifically, the more bitter zeal variety, vs. the "keep the Faith" and be holy variety. There are a lot of Trads who can't see the forest for the trees, and I wouldn't be surprised if that led to nothing good -- including giving up on the Traditional Movement.
I would wager you haven't been in the best Traditional Catholic circles, and/or you're disillusioned with what you've seen, having moved beyond the ideals and seen a lot of "how the sausage is made" and discovered the "warts and all" -- hoping that the East isn't as bad. But someday you might become disillusioned with the East, and then heaven help you. Beware the long-game of the devil... he just wants to get you, he doesn't care how...
3. You seem to contrast the Roman Rite as being bitter and denouncing, vs. the East just "keeping the liturgy pristine" and "busy over here staying Catholic". Well guess what? My Traditional Catholic chapel is "just keeping the Faith" as well. Our liturgy is 100% consonant with the Catholic Faith, with no corruptions or Modernism. So what advantage do the Eastern Rites have again?
4. As for where our salvation will ultimately come from -- you are welcome to your opinion, as this is classic "doubtful matter". Anything touching on the Crisis is automatically doubtful and NOT dogmatic.
As God is the author of Nature, and God cannot contradict Himself, I can't imagine a world where we're expected to "change our spots" and become something completely other, in order to restore the Church and/or keep the Faith. God isn't going to require the impossible, or the unnatural.
Matthew, I’m going to slow this down because I think you’re reading my position through a lens that doesn’t actually fit it.
First, I am not “giving up on the Traditional Movement,” nor am I losing heart, nor am I looking for an escape hatch because things are hard. I stayed in this fight a long time. I’ve been inside SSPX, Resistance, Williamson circles, CMRI, and sede circles long enough to see not just the ideals but the internal logic and the long-term consequences of each position. This isn’t fatigue. It’s analysis.
Second, I am not contrasting “bitter Romans” versus “holy Easterners.” That’s a caricature. I know plenty of Roman Rite traditionalists who are sincerely keeping the Faith, and I’ve said that repeatedly. The question isn’t whether a given chapel is valid or whether a given priest is sincere. The question is structural and ecclesiological: what actually preserves the Faith over time when a crisis lasts longer than a generation.
You say your chapel is just keeping the Faith, and I believe you. But the problem is not individual fidelity in the short term. The problem is sustainability across time without collapsing into either sectarianism or perpetual emergency governance. The Roman Resistance model requires constant denunciation, constant boundary policing, constant jurisdictional improvisation, and perpetual crisis language. That works for a while. Historically, it does not work indefinitely.
That’s where you and I diverge.
You frame the East as something “other,” almost as if I’m proposing people reinvent themselves culturally or ethnically. That’s not what’s happening. I didn’t “become Eastern” in the sense you’re describing. I didn’t reject my identity, culture, or formation. I recognized that the Church already contains multiple apostolic rites with intact theology, intact sacramental life, and a lived continuity that predates the modern Roman administrative framework entirely.
This is not exoticism or fetishism. It’s ecclesiology.
The Eastern Churches did not survive by being louder than Rome. They survived by not absorbing Roman doctrinal volatility into their worship, catechesis, and spiritual psychology. That is not silence-as-cowardice. It is non-reception as a lived reality. Those are not the same thing.
Your Nestorius example actually proves the point you think it refutes. Nestorius was condemned because he taught heresy as doctrine and attempted to impose it ecclesially. Vatican II did not define dogma in that way. Even you have explicitly said this distinction matters. Once you concede that, the East’s posture is no longer incoherent. They are not obligated to behave as if a dogmatic definition occurred when even Rome itself denies that one did.
As for denunciations, history simply does not support the idea that every bishop, everywhere, must publicly polemicize every crisis at all times or else be suspect. That standard would have condemned vast portions of the Church during Arianism, Iconoclasm, and multiple papal crises. The Church distinguishes between assent, toleration, non-reception, and resistance. You are collapsing those categories into one because it fits the Resistance model, not because history demands it.
You warn me about becoming disillusioned with the East someday. Fair enough. I’m not naive. But what I see in the East is not a movement fueled by outrage or sustained by emergency rhetoric. I see a Church that already knows how to survive imperial pressure, bad bishops, confused hierarchs, and long winters without redefining itself every decade.
Finally, when you say God would not require us to “change our spots,” I agree completely. That’s precisely why I’m not convinced the solution is perpetual Roman crisis management. God already provided multiple apostolic lungs. We didn’t invent them. We just forgot they existed.
I’m not abandoning Tradition. I’m asking whether we’ve mistaken one particular Roman strategy for the only way the Church can breathe.
If you want to argue that point, I’m happy to. But framing this as loss of heart, poisoning, or capitulation misses what I’m actually saying.
-
I think I understand your position, but you're still worrying above your pay grade. It is not for us to sit in ivory towers and think everything through to its "logical conclusion" and speed up time that way. That is how angels think. But they don't miss various points either. When a *man* speeds things up that way, it's just a distortion because he is forgetting countless facets as he moves the slider all the way to the end to "see what happens" or "how it turns out".
It is not for us to figure out how to solve the Crisis -- only to keep the Faith today and this year. One day at a time. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."
I do stand by my previous statement, that thinking like this ("I'm just taking this to its logical conclusion") leads to Bp. Fellay doing a 180 on the SSPX position on Vatican II, because he decided what we're doing isn't working, that the Traditional Movement has an expiration date, and that we're going to end up schismatic if we keep going down our current path.
I say: no we're not. Are you intending to be schismatic today? No. Why would you suddenly turn from God tomorrow? If Tradition was good enough for our fathers, it's good enough for me, and good enough for my children. Moreover, if something better or different is needed, God will make that plain to see by His providence.
If God raised up one +ABL for the Western world, He can raise up another. From the very stones, if need be.
-
I think I understand your position, but you're still worrying above your pay grade. It is not for us to sit in ivory towers and think everything through to its "logical conclusion" and speed up time that way. That is how angels think. But they don't miss various points either. When a *man* speeds things up that way, it's just a distortion because he is forgetting countless facets as he moves the slider all the way to the end to "see what happens" or "how it turns out".
It is not for us to figure out how to solve the Crisis -- only to keep the Faith today and this year. One day at a time. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."
I do stand by my previous statement, that thinking like this ("I'm just taking this to its logical conclusion") leads to Bp. Fellay doing a 180 on the SSPX position on Vatican II, because he decided what we're doing isn't working, that the Traditional Movement has an expiration date, and that we're going to end up schismatic if we keep going down our current path.
I say: no we're not. Are you intending to be schismatic today? No. Why would you suddenly turn from God tomorrow? If Tradition was good enough for our fathers, it's good enough for me, and good enough for my children. Moreover, if something better or different is needed, God will make that plain to see by His providence.
If God raised up one +ABL for the Western world, He can raise up another. From the very stones, if need be.
I think this is actually closer to where we agree than it might appear. I am not trying to “solve” the Crisis, nor force outcomes, nor accelerate conclusions for their own sake. I fully agree that our primary duty is to keep the Faith today, this year, one day at a time, and to trust Providence for what comes next.
The Byzantine Church was providentially provided to me in a time of need. I didn’t choose the Byzantine Liturgy. I first attended it in Tennessee in 2018 and didn’t like it much at first.
Where I differ slightly is that I don’t think carefully examining long-term ecclesiological consequences is opposed to fidelity in the present. The Church has always reflected on implications precisely so that she could avoid drift, confusion, or quiet capitulation. That reflection doesn’t replace prayer, obedience, or daily faithfulness, it serves them.
I am not advocating schism, novelty, or abandoning what our fathers handed down. Quite the opposite. My concern is preserving the integrity of Tradition without pretending that unresolved contradictions do not exist. Holding those tensions without forcing premature resolutions seems to me a legitimate Catholic posture, not an angelic abstraction.
In any case, I appreciate the clarity of your response, and I agree that Providence, not our theorizing, will ultimately resolve what we cannot.
-
Just want to say that this is one of the most interesting and thought provoking discussions I've read here in some time. Thank you.
-
You need to stop using ai to do your thinking.
-
You need to stop using ai to do your thinking.
Dismissing my arguments as AI because you have nothing to add to the discussion just reveals your own lack of insight.
-
The Faith never needed to be saved by Latin Trad cats. That is the truth you cannot see.
Since all of the easterns had accepted VII, then yes, the sacraments had to be preserved and if the context of that was the Latin Rite, then yea.
There was ZERO public resistance among the Eastern bishops.
Many eastern Catholics have no problem being humble. And accepting this. You clearly do though have a problem with it.
-
1. Necessity Requires Absence — and Absence Never Occurred
In Catholic moral theology, necessity presupposes privation: something essential must be unavailable through ordinary means. But necessity collapses the moment a legitimate alternative exists within the Church.
The Eastern Catholic Churches—Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian, among others—never abandoned:
- Apostolic liturgy
- Patristic theology
- Sacrificial worship
- Objective sacramental discipline
- A non-anthropocentric orientation to God
A question: If a Latin Rite Catholic has no Eastern Rite to attend within several hours, does it then become permissible to try and save the rite they're familiar with?
If I recall correctly. Eastern Rite churches comprise something like 1% of the population of Catholics on the planet and aren't available worldwide, and likely weren't either when the SSPX was forming. For those without said coverage, doesn't that automatically qualify for absence and privation through ordinary means?
-
Since all of the easterns had accepted VII, then yes, the sacraments had to be preserved and if the context of that was the Latin Rite, then yea.
There was ZERO public resistance among the Eastern bishops.
Many eastern Catholics have no problem being humble. And accepting this. You clearly do though have a problem with it.
You keep speaking in abstractions about what you think the Byzantine Church must believe because of “communion,” while I’m actually sitting in Byzantine catechism halls listening to clergy explicitly reject modernist nonsense in theology, ecclesiology, and society. Just last night I attended a Byzantine catechism that directly criticized Lumen Gentium, the post-conciliar ecclesial confusion, and the collapse of discipline and moral clarity in the modern Church. It was more forthright, more coherent, and more grounded than anything I ever heard in SSPX catechism, which is still forced to tiptoe around Rome with legal fictions and emergency language.
You keep repeating “ZERO public resistance” as if resistance only counts when it looks like Latin activism. That betrays your ignorance of how the Byzantine Church actually functions. Resistance in the East has never been performative, juridical, or press-release driven. It has always been doctrinal, ascetical, and liturgical. The Byzantines did not rewrite their theology to accommodate Vatican II, did not refashion their liturgy to encode its ambiguities, and did not restructure their spiritual life around its anthropology. The Latin Church did all three, openly and proudly. You can’t erase that difference by shouting “communion” louder.
You also keep pretending that communion automatically means doctrinal absorption, which is historically false and theologically lazy. Communion has never been the test of fidelity. Preservation of the faith has. That is why Arian, Iconoclast, and Monothelite bishops were condemned despite existing within juridical structures. The question has never been “Who stayed aligned?” but “Who transmitted the faith intact?” The Byzantine Church did. The Latin Church demonstrably did not.
What really seems to bother you is not that the Byzantine Church failed, but that it didn’t need to reinvent itself to survive. The Latin world collapsed into fragmentation, psychological damage, clerical decay, and endless internal crisis management. The Byzantine world didn’t. It kept its theology liturgical, its anthropology ascetical, and its clergy formed inside a spiritual culture that never embraced the modern managerial priesthood model that has so catastrophically failed in the West.
You keep accusing me of arrogance because I’m not playing the Latin traditionalist coping game anymore. But what you call pride is simply refusing to keep pretending that a structure which has produced decades of doctrinal confusion, moral collapse, and clerical pathology is somehow “the solution” because it preserved rubrics. I’m not romanticizing the East. I’m pointing out that it retained coherence while the Latin Church lost it.
So no, this isn’t about humility versus pride, or acceptance versus resistance, or personal preference versus tradition. It’s about results. One Church absorbed modernity into its bloodstream and is still bleeding out. The other didn’t. You can keep repeating slogans about communion if you want, but slogans don’t undo history, and they don’t override what people can actually see, hear, and experience when they step inside these churches.
-
A question: If a Latin Rite Catholic has no Eastern Rite to attend within several hours, does it then become permissible to try and save the rite they're familiar with?
If I recall correctly. Eastern Rite churches comprise something like 1% of the population of Catholics on the planet and aren't available worldwide, and likely weren't either when the SSPX was forming. For those without said coverage, doesn't that automatically qualify for absence and privation through ordinary means?
Ok. This is one of those parts of the discussion that actually helps move it forward, so it’s appreciated.
When I talk about the “state of necessity,” I am not saying that SSPX or Lefebvrite Masses are never an option. Even Rome acknowledges that attendance at SSPX Masses fulfills the Sunday obligation. I also have no problem, in principle, attending a Latin Rite Mass offered by CMRI clergy.
The specific state of necessity I am talking about does not concern access to Mass for the laity. It concerns the extension of that necessity to episcopal consecrations.
Let me be very clear here. I support the 1988 episcopal consecrations carried out by Archbishop Lefebvre in Campos, Brazil. Given the situation at the time, those consecrations were justified.
What I do not believe is that the same state of necessity exists today that would require ongoing or future SSPX episcopal consecrations.
The SSPX today has roughly 650 priests worldwide. In addition to that, there exist other valid traditional Latin bishops outside the SSPX, as well as valid bishops in the Byzantine Churches, some of which demonstrably preserved the faith, sacraments, and apostolic continuity through the post-conciliar period. That materially changes the situation.
If sufficient ordinary means exist for providing priests and sacraments throughout the world, then the argument for a continuing extraordinary state of necessity at the episcopal level no longer holds. A state of necessity is contextual. It is not permanent by default.
So when I say the state of necessity is now undermined, I am speaking only about the claimed ongoing need for SSPX bishops. I am not denying pastoral hardship in remote areas, and I am not condemning the faithful who attend SSPX chapels due to lack of alternatives.
The argument is simply this: if there are already sufficient valid means for sustaining sacramental life throughout the world, then no state of necessity exists that would require additional SSPX bishops at this time. That is the actual claim being made here.
-
If the Easterns had resisted properly, then they would have consecrated Bishops without the permission of Rome.
Instead they grovelled everytime they wanted a new Bishop. For permission from the Modernists.
-
If the Easterns had resisted properly, then they would have consecrated Bishops without the permission of Rome.
Instead they grovelled everytime they wanted a new Bishop. For permission from the Modernists.
That claim assumes the only legitimate form of resistance is illicit episcopal consecration, which is historically false. The Byzantine Church resisted modernism by not absorbing it into its liturgy, catechesis, ascetic life, or theology, and therefore did not create a sacramental emergency requiring parallel hierarchies. You only consecrate bishops without mandate when the faith itself cannot otherwise be preserved; that condition existed in the Latin world, not in the Byzantine one. Asking Rome for bishops while refusing to mutate doctrine is not “groveling,” it is proof that no state of necessity existed. Illicit consecrations are a remedy for collapse, not a badge of courage.
-
You’re drawing sweeping ecclesiological conclusions from a very local experience, and that’s where the argument breaks down. Hearing Byzantine clergy critique Vatican II or modernism doesn’t mean the Byzantine Catholic Churches reject the Council or its doctrinal framework. Those same clergy commemorate the Pope, accept Vatican II as a valid ecuмenical council, operate under post‑conciliar canon law - (CCEO), and remain fully within the magisterial structure of the modern papacy (I realize that this doesn't really matter to you, but it merits being said).
What you’re witnessing is internal critique, not doctrinal dissent. The East didn’t “reject” Vatican II — it received it in the only way the East ever receives anything: slowly, organically, and without rewriting its theology. That’s not resistance; that’s the Eastern mode of reception.
Communion doesn’t erase theological diversity, but it absolutely does imply doctrinal alignment. If communion didn’t require doctrinal unity, then Arian, Iconoclast, and Monothelite bishops would have remained legitimate simply because they were inside the juridical structure. They didn’t. They were condemned precisely because communion without doctrinal alignment is counterfeit. The Byzantine Catholic Churches remain in communion with Rome because they accept the same dogmatic definitions, the same ecuмenical councils, and the same papal authority — even if they express these realities in a different idiom.
Ultimately, you’re comparing the East’s healthiest expressions to the West’s sickest ones. Vibrant Byzantine parishes, coherent catechesis, and ascetical spirituality are real — but they don’t represent the entire East any more than clown Masses represent the entire West.
Question about the CCEO: Does it allow for Communion to be given to non-Catholics like the 1983 Code does?
I believe this is it here:
Canon 671 - §1. Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments only to Catholic Christian faithful, who, likewise, licitly receive the sacraments only from Catholic ministers. §2. If necessity requires it or genuine spiritual advantage suggests it and provided that the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, it is permitted for Catholic Christian faithful, for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister, to receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers, in whose Churches these sacraments are valid. §3. Likewise Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to Christian faithful of Eastern Churches, who do not have full communion with the Catholic Church, if they ask for them on their own and are properly disposed. This holds also for the Christian faithful of other Churches, who according to the judgment of the Apostolic See, are in the same condition as the Eastern Churches as far as the sacraments are concerned. §4. If there is a danger of death or another matter of serious necessity in the judgment of the eparchial bishop, the synod of bishops of the patriarchal Church or the council of hierarchs, Catholic ministers licitly administer the same sacraments also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach the ministers of their own ecclesial communities and who request them on their own, provided they manifest a faith consonant with that of the Catholic Church concerning these sacraments and are rightly disposed. §5. For the cases in §§2, 3 and 4, norms of particular law are to be enacted only after consultation with at least the local competent authority of the non-Catholic Church or ecclesial community concerned.
-
That claim assumes the only legitimate form of resistance is illicit episcopal consecration, which is historically false. The Byzantine Church resisted modernism by not absorbing it into its liturgy, catechesis, ascetic life, or theology, and therefore did not create a sacramental emergency requiring parallel hierarchies. You only consecrate bishops without mandate when the faith itself cannot otherwise be preserved; that condition existed in the Latin world, not in the Byzantine one. Asking Rome for bishops while refusing to mutate doctrine is not “groveling,” it is proof that no state of necessity existed. Illicit consecrations are a remedy for collapse, not a badge of courage.
Just because they kept the traditional liturgy does not mean they resisted.
Even the indulters did that.
And the indulters did mutate doctrine.
Why dont you try talking to the resistance eastern catholics who have suffered at the hands of the modernist eastern bishops.
That might be a useful wake up call for you.
Get you out of the romance you seem to be involved in.
-
You’re drawing sweeping ecclesiological conclusions from a very local experience, and that’s where the argument breaks down. Hearing Byzantine clergy critique Vatican II or modernism doesn’t mean the Byzantine Catholic Churches reject the Council or its doctrinal framework. Those same clergy commemorate the Pope, accept Vatican II as a valid ecuмenical council, operate under post‑conciliar canon law - (CCEO), and remain fully within the magisterial structure of the modern papacy (I realize that this doesn't really matter to you, but it merits being said).
What you’re witnessing is internal critique, not doctrinal dissent. The East didn’t “reject” Vatican II — it received it in the only way the East ever receives anything: slowly, organically, and without rewriting its theology. That’s not resistance; that’s the Eastern mode of reception.
Communion doesn’t erase theological diversity, but it absolutely does imply doctrinal alignment. If communion didn’t require doctrinal unity, then Arian, Iconoclast, and Monothelite bishops would have remained legitimate simply because they were inside the juridical structure. They didn’t. They were condemned precisely because communion without doctrinal alignment is counterfeit. The Byzantine Catholic Churches remain in communion with Rome because they accept the same dogmatic definitions, the same ecuмenical councils, and the same papal authority — even if they express these realities in a different idiom.
Ultimately, you’re comparing the East’s healthiest expressions to the West’s sickest ones. Vibrant Byzantine parishes, coherent catechesis, and ascetical spirituality are real — but they don’t represent the entire East any more than clown Masses represent the entire West.
Question about the CCEO: Does it allow for Communion to be given to non-Catholics like the 1983 Code does?
I believe this is it here:
Canon 671 - §1. Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments only to Catholic Christian faithful, who, likewise, licitly receive the sacraments only from Catholic ministers. §2. If necessity requires it or genuine spiritual advantage suggests it and provided that the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, it is permitted for Catholic Christian faithful, for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister, to receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers, in whose Churches these sacraments are valid. §3. Likewise Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to Christian faithful of Eastern Churches, who do not have full communion with the Catholic Church, if they ask for them on their own and are properly disposed. This holds also for the Christian faithful of other Churches, who according to the judgment of the Apostolic See, are in the same condition as the Eastern Churches as far as the sacraments are concerned. §4. If there is a danger of death or another matter of serious necessity in the judgment of the eparchial bishop, the synod of bishops of the patriarchal Church or the council of hierarchs, Catholic ministers licitly administer the same sacraments also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach the ministers of their own ecclesial communities and who request them on their own, provided they manifest a faith consonant with that of the Catholic Church concerning these sacraments and are rightly disposed. §5. For the cases in §§2, 3 and 4, norms of particular law are to be enacted only after consultation with at least the local competent authority of the non-Catholic Church or ecclesial community concerned.
You’re just bringing up more information that makes my point for me.
Just because something appears in a canon law text that the Roman Church published does not determine how a Sui Juris Church actually believes, lives, or understands itself. Canon law is juridical and permissive by nature; it defines what may be tolerated under exceptional circuмstances, not what constitutes the theological self-understanding of a Church. Treating a canon as if it automatically rewrites ecclesiology is a category mistake. The real question is not what Rome allows on paper in edge cases, nor how badly those permissions are abused in the Latin world, but whether the Eastern Churches internalized those permissions as doctrine. They did not. The Byzantine Churches did not construct a theology of intercommunion, did not reinterpret the Eucharist as a symbol of partial unity, did not collapse sacramental life into pastoral accommodation, and did not adopt religious indifferentism as an operating principle. Their theology, liturgy, and catechesis remain structured around the same dogmatic content they always held: the same Creed, the same ecuмenical councils, the same sacramental ontology, and communion with Rome understood dogmatically rather than sociologically. Even if parts of the CCEO are poorly written or open to abuse, that fact has no bearing on whether the East is Catholic unless one can demonstrate a dogmatic rupture, a contradiction of defined doctrine, or a redefinition of the sacraments themselves. None of that exists. The East remains Catholic precisely because it never absorbed the post-conciliar Western habit of turning emergency exceptions into norms. The collapse occurred in the West, where discipline failed and categories blurred, not in the East, which retained the distinction between economy and doctrine. In the end, practice does not decide catholicity, and paperwork does not either. Dogma does.
-
From Reply #63:
Here is a screenshot from a Maronite church in San Antonio. ...
... Also note where the church's parishioners came from -- "Lebanon and middle eastern countries". Which is understandable for them. But not for a white boy born in the Midwest USA to a Roman Rite Trad Catholic family.
The referenced screenshot states that the church was established in 1910 to serve people primarily from Lebanon and Middle Eastern countries. If one were to exam the history of many Latin Rite Catholic churches from the middle 19th into the early 20th centuries one would discover that many, many of the founding parishioners were from various European countries. I sometimes attend the monthly Divine Liturgy in Kennewick, WA offered by the Ruthenian priest from Spokane. While I've not "interrogated" the entire congregation it is a safe assumption that the vast majority, if not all, the attendees are native to the United States. If there are any foreign born they likely are from a Western Hemisphere country south of the U.S. border and were originally baptized in the Latin Rite.
-
Just because they kept the traditional liturgy does not mean they resisted.
Even the indulters did that.
And the indulters did mutate doctrine.
Why dont you try talking to the resistance eastern catholics who have suffered at the hands of the modernist eastern bishops.
That might be a useful wake up call for you.
Get you out of the romance you seem to be involved in.
That’s a non-argument. Keeping a liturgy isn’t the claim, and bringing up “indulters” is a dodge meant to avoid the real issue. The question is doctrinal mutation, not ritual survival. Show where the Byzantine Churches redefined dogma, sacramental ontology, or ecclesiology. You can’t, because it didn’t happen. Pointing to disgruntled individuals, bad bishops, or internal suffering proves nothing—every orthodox body in history has suffered under corrupt hierarchs. That never determined catholicity. If persecution by modernists were the test of heresy, the entire pre-Nicene Church would fail. What you’re calling “romance” is simply refusing to confuse abuse, discipline, or politics with dogma. You’re arguing vibes because you don’t have definitions.
-
From Reply #63:
The referenced screenshot states that the church was established in 1910 to serve people primarily from Lebanon and Middle Eastern countries. If one were to exam the history of many Latin Rite Catholic churches from the middle 19th into the early 20th centuries one would discover that many, many of the founding parishioners were from various European countries. I sometimes attend the monthly Divine Liturgy in Kennewick, WA offered by the Ruthenian priest from Spokane. While I've not "interrogated" the entire congregation it is a safe assumption that the vast majority, if not all, the attendees are native to the United States. If there are any foreign born they likely are from a Western Hemisphere country south of the U.S. border and were originally baptized in the Latin Rite.
Almost every person at the Byzantine church I attend at came from the Latin rite and a big majority of them from Tradition. The church was built before the town it is in by East European immigrants.
As the Latin rite becomes more sectarian, divisive and less coherent, Byzantine churches will undoubtedly absorb some of their congregations.
-
The SSPX today has roughly 650 priests worldwide. In addition to that, there exist other valid traditional Latin bishops outside the SSPX, as well as valid bishops in the Byzantine Churches, some of which demonstrably preserved the faith, sacraments, and apostolic continuity through the post-conciliar period. That materially changes the situation.
If sufficient ordinary means exist for providing priests and sacraments throughout the world, then the argument for a continuing extraordinary state of necessity at the episcopal level no longer holds.
:facepalm: You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth.
1. You claim that the future is set (i.e. the latin rite will continue to deteriorate), therefore everyone should switch to the Eastern rites.
2. Then you claim that the sspx should NOT worry about the future and just "work with the priests they have" and not worry about new bishops. Even though you admit the latin rite will continue to deteriorate.
Makes no sense.
-
:facepalm: You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth.
1. You claim that the future is set (i.e. the latin rite will continue to deteriorate), therefore everyone should switch to the Eastern rites.
2. Then you claim that the sspx should NOT worry about the future and just "work with the priests they have" and not worry about new bishops. Even though you admit the latin rite will continue to deteriorate.
Makes no sense.
Some commenters will do anything except be honest in able to dismiss the inconvenient truth.
I never said the Latin Rite will deteriorate. It already has. That took place when the Novus Ordo Mass was forced on tye dioceses.
Instead, I am saying that the Byzantine seeds are planted enough to grow into a legitimate defense of the Faith against the modern crisis. The SSPX, Resistance and some Sede Vacantist groups have accepted perpetual crisis management when the Truth is not that dark. Valid Catholic bishops and priests exist outside the structure of SSPX and they never became Modernists.
It’s hard to accept that one specific group isn’t going to save the Church for one certain group. It actually perpetuates the Crisis to some degree.
-
Even if parts of the CCEO are poorly written or open to abuse, that fact has no bearing on whether the East is Catholic unless one can demonstrate a dogmatic rupture, a contradiction of defined doctrine, or a redefinition of the sacraments themselves.
Canon 671 of the CCEO would indeed be seen as a RUPTURE, because the Church consistently treated communicatio in sacris with heretics and schismatics as something gravely forbidden, not merely by positive law but by the very nature of the Church and the sacraments. The 1917 Code of Canon Law forbade giving the sacraments to non‑Catholics and receiving them from non‑Catholic ministers, except in very narrow cases like baptism in danger of death, reflecting an already long‑standing discipline that common worship and sacramental sharing with those outside the Church was illicit. Pius XI in Mortalium Animos condemned common religious acts with non‑Catholics as contrary to the divine constitution of the Church, precisely because they obscure the truth that unity of faith and submission to the Roman Pontiff are necessary for full incorporation into the Church. Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum taught that unity of faith and unity of government are essential notes of the Church, and that separation from the Roman Pontiff breaks visible unity; this undergirded the long‑standing refusal to treat sacramental communion as possible where ecclesial communion is objectively ruptured. Pre‑conciliar theology and practice thus saw the sacraments—especially the Eucharist—as belonging to the faithful who are visibly in the Church, and communicatio in sacris with those publicly separated was treated as intrinsically disordered, not as something the Church could freely expand by legislation.
Canon 671 authorizes what earlier magisterial teaching and universal discipline regarded as excluded by the very nature of the sacraments and the Church’s visible unity. A total flip from the previous teaching. The shift from “absolutely forbidden except perhaps in extremis” to “permitted under broader conditions of necessity, spiritual advantage, or simple request in the case of Eastern non‑Catholics” would not be seen as a mere disciplinary adjustment, but as a practical denial of the earlier claim that the sacraments are to be given only to those who are visibly within the unity of the Church. That is why, judged strictly by pre‑Vatican II categories and sources, canon 671 would be considered a rupture: it treats sacramental sharing with those outside full communion as something the Church can positively regulate and extend, whereas earlier magisterial teaching and law treated such sharing as fundamentally at odds with the divine order of faith, the Church, and the sacraments themselves.
The Church cannot receive heretical/evil laws to promulgate as universal disciplines. The Byzantines received Canon 671 under John Paul II. The Latins received it in the 1983 Code (c. 844). This is a rupture not only from an arbitrary ecclesiastical law, but Divine Law itself. That is why the Easterners are permitted to stay in their own little bubble and they don't have to dance to all the tunes that the Vatican plays in every regard, because they have already compromised themselves by accepting evil laws into their code (if not put in practice everywhere) then in principle at the very least they must accept them and they do. This single Canon alone proves what a flop the Eastern rites have become. Even if your argument about them preserving the faith by keeping a "pristine Liturgy" was true, once they officially accepted Canon 671, your whole argument disintegrates into oblivion. They are no different than the Modernists, because they accept the Modernist changes into their own laws. They are one with them. They are united in their new vision for humanity. They share the same post-Vatican II ecuмenical faith, not the true Catholic Faith, unsullied, ever-pure, without spot or wrinkle, immaculate, etc. Now, there can be multitudes of Catholics stuck in those Eastern churches that are aligned with Vatican II and they somehow by the grace of God have a healthy faith. That no one could say for certain in every case. It is better to just focus on the facts of where the corruption is (c. 671) for the sake of identifying if they are actually in communion with the Modernists or not. If they hold this Canon they are. They hold it therefore - they are in communion with the Modernists. But if they are in communion with the Modernists, they cannot also be in communion with the Catholic Church.
In the end, practice does not decide catholicity, and paperwork does not either. Dogma does.
The assertion that “dogma decides catholicity” is correct—but that is precisely why pre‑Vatican II theology forbade ordinary sacramental sharing. Dogma teaches that the Church is visibly one, that unity of faith and unity of government are essential marks, and that the sacraments belong to the faithful who are within that unity. Because sacramental discipline flowed directly from these dogmatic truths, it was not “paperwork” but the concrete expression of the Church’s divine constitution. You seem to be pitting dogma against discipline, but in pre‑Vatican II Catholic theology, the two cannot be separated: sacramental discipline is the lived application of dogma, not its contradiction.
-
:facepalm: You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth.
1. You claim that the future is set (i.e. the latin rite will continue to deteriorate), therefore everyone should switch to the Eastern rites.
2. Then you claim that the sspx should NOT worry about the future and just "work with the priests they have" and not worry about new bishops. Even though you admit the latin rite will continue to deteriorate.
Makes no sense.
You’re really a public, shameless liar for saying that I say everyone should switch to the Eastern Rite. It shows your complete lack of understanding.
The habits and customs of a lot of Latin Rite church goers is bot something I want to ruin the Byzantine church. Please stay where you are at. You will still be able to save your soul.
Those of us who have been around for a while remember 2007 when the Motu Proprio was published. And then again when Covid closed so many of the Modernist churches. I physically saw what that did to SSPX churches. Please. Don’t.
-
Canon 671 of the CCEO would indeed be seen as a rupture, because the Church consistently treated communicatio in sacris with heretics and schismatics as something gravely forbidden, not merely by positive law but by the very nature of the Church and the sacraments. The 1917 Code of Canon Law forbade giving the sacraments to non‑Catholics and receiving them from non‑Catholic ministers, except in very narrow cases like baptism in danger of death, reflecting an already long‑standing discipline that common worship and sacramental sharing with those outside the Church was illicit. Pius XI in Mortalium Animos condemned common religious acts with non‑Catholics as contrary to the divine constitution of the Church, precisely because they obscure the truth that unity of faith and submission to the Roman Pontiff are necessary for full incorporation into the Church. Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum taught that unity of faith and unity of government are essential notes of the Church, and that separation from the Roman Pontiff breaks visible unity; this undergirded the long‑standing refusal to treat sacramental communion as possible where ecclesial communion is objectively ruptured. Pre‑conciliar theology and practice thus saw the sacraments—especially the Eucharist—as belonging to the faithful who are visibly in the Church, and communicatio in sacris with those publicly separated was treated as intrinsically disordered, not as something the Church could freely expand by legislation.
Canon 671 authorizes what earlier magisterial teaching and universal discipline regarded as excluded by the very nature of the sacraments and the Church’s visible unity. The shift from “absolutely forbidden except perhaps in extremis” to “permitted under broader conditions of necessity, spiritual advantage, or simple request in the case of Eastern non‑Catholics” would not be seen as a mere disciplinary adjustment, but as a practical denial of the earlier claim that the sacraments are to be given only to those who are visibly within the unity of the Church. That is why, judged strictly by pre‑Vatican II categories and sources, canon 671 would be considered a rupture: it treats sacramental sharing with those outside full communion as something the Church can positively regulate and extend, whereas earlier magisterial teaching and law treated such sharing as fundamentally at odds with the divine order of faith, the Church, and the sacraments themselves. The Church cannot receive heretical/evil laws to promulgate as universal disciplines. The Byzantines received Canon 671 under John Paul II. The Latins received it in the 1983 Code (c. 844). This is a rupture from not from a matter of ecclesiastical law, but Divine Law. That is why the Easterners are permitted to stay in their own little bubble and they don't have to dance to all the tunes that the Vatican plays in every regard, because they have already compromised themselves by accepting evil laws (if not in practice everywhere) then in principle at the very least.
The assertion that “dogma decides catholicity” is correct—but that is precisely why pre‑Vatican II theology forbade ordinary sacramental sharing. Dogma teaches that the Church is visibly one, that unity of faith and unity of government are essential marks, and that the sacraments belong to the faithful who are within that unity. Because sacramental discipline flowed directly from these dogmatic truths, it was not “paperwork” but the concrete expression of the Church’s divine constitution. You seem to be pitting dogma against discipline, but in pre‑Vatican II Catholic theology, the two cannot be separated: sacramental discipline is the lived application of dogma, not its contradiction.
You miss the point entirely and argue incoherently.
The fact that on paper it says they may give Communion to Orthodox under certain circuмstances, does not equal some kind of “gotcha” moment that the Byzantine Church is heretical. Because to claim it is not Catholic, it would have to be heretical or schismatic. It is not.
To waste hundreds of words to argue that tells me something very interesting about you and your reading comprehension. To argue that point but miss entirely the issue of Catholicism just means you
- don’t understand the topics well enough to continue intelligent debate
-have limited understanding of Church History and actual experience lived in the Church
-spend more time on the internet getting dopamine than actually taking life’s matters seriously.
That’s a pretty heavy impression to give Catholic Info users. Some of the users and guests are priests and bishops.
I wouldn’t want to be you.
-
You can keep Father Bob with his wife and children. Nothing says "mysticism" like a priest who goes to his kid's soccer games.
-
You can keep Father Bob with his wife and children. Nothing says "mysticism" like a priest who goes to his kid's soccer games.
Well, there’s been plenty of books, newspaper articles, Remnant announcements, investigative reports, lawsuits and incarcerations of sɛҳuąƖ predator priests with Latin Rite Tradition.
I’ll take a bearded Father Bob that teaches True Faith any day.
-
The fact that on paper it says they may give Communion to Orthodox under certain circuмstances, does not equal some kind of “gotcha” moment that the Byzantine Church is heretical. Because to claim it is not Catholic, it would have to be heretical or schismatic. It is not.
To claim, one may give the Catholic sacraments to heretics/schismatics who have not repented of their heresy/schism - is both HERETICAL AND SCHISMATIC.
-
I know it's early yet but the Poster of the Year ( so far ) goes to Centro for taking on all comers and presenting his position with coherence and, almost more importantly, without the typical name calling. Not on board with the position but nice to see the discussion.
-
Well, there’s been plenty of books, newspaper articles, Remnant announcements, investigative reports, lawsuits and incarcerations of sɛҳuąƖ predator priests with Latin Rite Tradition.
I’ll take a bearded Father Bob that teaches True Faith any day.
Are you implying that celibacy leads to sɛҳuąƖ crimes? Or that the true faith is not kept in traditional latin churches? Sounds like you've absorbed both liberal and schismatic talking points.
-
I know it's early yet but the Poster of the Year ( so far ) goes to Centro for taking on all comers and presenting his position with coherence and, almost more importantly, without the typical name calling. Not on board with the position but nice to see the discussion.
That's because he uses AI. Most of these aren't really his posts, but AI generated content.
-
To waste hundreds of words.
It is never a waste of words to defend the truth. Canon 671 is heretical and the Byzantine churches accept it as law. As for the rest of your comments, I could care less what any said clergy who read my words have to think about me. I would say all the same to them personally if asked. It seems it is rather you who is doing the dodging. I hammered you on the other post about "Silence as non-reception" and now I have proven that the East has ruptured from the Divine Law by permitting into its canons a law that allows for the sacraments to be shared with unrepentant heretics/schismatics.
-
Are you implying that celibacy leads to sɛҳuąƖ crimes? Or that the true faith is not kept in traditional latin churches? Sounds like you've absorbed both liberal and schismatic talking points.
I asked for you to actually add something to the discussion but you just keep bringing in weird comments.
I’ve repeatedly stated that the True Faith is preserved in the Latin Rite church and that the Latin Rite Mass is arguably the most beautiful rite.
I’ve now had to repeatedly assert that on this thread. That given, I’ll consider the matter closed and no longer respond to it when used as a talking point.
-
That's because he uses AI. Most of these aren't really his posts, but AI generated content.
Any reader can see that is not true. The fruit of the discussion here occurred actually several pages back with the forum owner. Not sure how long you have been around, but the people here read and are not so naive.
-
You can keep Father Bob with his wife and children. Nothing says "mysticism" like a priest who goes to his kid's soccer games.
From what I understand, the forbiddance of married clergy by the Latins and the allowance of non-celibate priests by the Greeks were both disciplinary "novelties" (if you will). The Latins went one way from the baseline (from allowing celibate married clergy to only allowing celibate unmarried clergy), the Greeks the other (from allowing celibate married clergy to permitting married clergy who practice periodic continence)
I don't think us Latins should criticize the long standing practices of other Churches, it's really not our business. It's a different culture, different method of practicing the faith, and it seems to have more-or-less worked for them
-
It is never a waste of words to defend the truth. Canon 671 is heretical and the Byzantine churches accept it as law. As for the rest of your comments, I could care less what any said clergy…
What you just wrote is the crisis in miniature. You declare a canon “heretical,” announce that entire Churches are guilty by association, then proudly state you don’t care what clergy, bishops, or lived ecclesial reality actually say or do. That isn’t defending truth, all it is is private judgment with an attitude. You’re not arguing theology; you’re appointing yourself pope, council, and magisterium because it feels good to condemn something that threatens your narrative. The Byzantine Church bothers people like you precisely because it exists: ancient, coherent, Catholic, and not dependent on your permission. So instead of engaging dogma, you retreat into slogans and absolutist language while maintaing a narrow, defensive mind and call it clarity. That posture isn’t strength. It’s insecurity dressed up as certainty.
-
What you just wrote is the crisis in miniature. You declare a canon “heretical,” announce that entire Churches are guilty by association, then proudly state you don’t care what clergy, bishops, or lived ecclesial reality actually say or do. That isn’t defending truth, all it is is private judgment with an attitude. You’re not arguing theology; you’re appointing yourself pope, council, and magisterium because it feels good to condemn something that threatens your narrative. The Byzantine Church bothers people like you precisely because it exists: ancient, coherent, Catholic, and not dependent on your permission. So instead of engaging dogma, you retreat into slogans and absolutist language while maintaing a narrow, defensive mind and call it clarity. That posture isn’t strength. It’s insecurity dressed up as certainty.
You have answered nothing.
Your AI is circling because you have no answer and now you diverge into unrelated points of my perspective, judging me, my motives, etc.
The charge of “private judgment” misunderstands the point entirely. The argument I presented was not based on personal authority, nor on dismissing clergy or lived experience, but on pre‑Vatican II magisterial teaching, which explicitly tied sacramental discipline to dogma. Before the Council, the Church consistently taught—through Trent, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and the 1917 Code—that the sacraments belong to the visible unity of the Church and cannot be given to those who publicly remain outside that unity. That is not my invention; it is the Church’s own theological framework. To restate what the Church taught for centuries is not “appointing oneself pope,” but simply acknowledging what the magisterium itself said.
The claim that pointing out doctrinal principles is an attack on the Byzantine Churches is also misplaced. The Eastern Catholic Churches are fully Catholic, but they were bound by the same pre‑conciliar dogmatic principles regarding sacramental unity as the Latin Church. Their ancient liturgical and theological heritage was always honored, but they did not possess a parallel magisterium with a different ecclesiology. To say that sacramental discipline flowed from dogma is not an insult to the East; it is a recognition that the Catholic Church—East and West—shared one faith and one sacramental theology before the Council.
Finally, the accusation of insecurity or absolutism avoids the real issue: either sacramental discipline expresses dogma, or it does not. Pre‑Vatican II theology held that it does. That is why the Church forbade communicatio in sacris. To point out that a later discipline cannot be reconciled with earlier dogmatic principles is not emotionalism or defensiveness; it is simply taking the Church’s own pre‑conciliar teaching seriously. If dogma governs sacramental discipline, then changes in discipline must be evaluated in light of dogma—not dismissed as “paperwork,” and not reduced to personal preference. By accepting Canon 671, the Easterners deny dogma. They might not practice this denial across the board, but they have made peace with Belial by receiving this heretical, false law into their canons.
-
You have answered nothing.
Your AI is circling because you have no answer and now you diverge into unrelated points of my perspective, judging me, my motives, etc.
Second sentence accuses me of using AI. That’s now the fourth time in this thread, and it’s still not true. I’ll treat it as the final slander.
I didn’t read the rest. Once a discussion devolves into accusations instead of arguments, it no longer merits attention. When some users can’t carry an argument to its conclusion, they reach for insinuation instead. That’s not Catholic disputation, and it’s not worth my time.
Discussion with you no longer serves a Catholic purpose because:
– It no longer serves truth, since assertions have replaced definitions and conclusions are announced before arguments are answered.
– It no longer serves discipline, since repeated accusations and self-closure are not how Catholic theology is actually done.
– It no longer serves the Church, which does not rise or fall on forum verdicts or personal tribunals.
I’m content to leave the last word to you. The Byzantine Churches will continue existing either way, which is probably the funnest part of all this.
-
You’re really a public, shameless liar for saying that I say everyone should switch to the Eastern Rite. It shows your complete lack of understanding.
:facepalm: So do you not understand the slippery slope of your own arguments?
a. The eastern rite is uncorrupted.
b. The latin rite is corrupted.
c. The sspx has no state of necessity and shouldn't get more bishops.
Per your own logic, latin rite Tradition will phase out because you're arguing they don't need anymore bishops. Thus, what will be left? Eastern rites.
-
Presence at a Roman rite is not doctrinal submission, and non-reception through unchanged worship is not consent. You’re applying Latin polemical assumptions to an Eastern ecclesiology that has never worked that way.
I just want to point out that I was SSPX before the 1988 consecrations, longtime forum members will remember my international closeness to the resistance and their episcopal consecrations. Others will remember my support for Bishop Da Silva. My views of the East are the only views expressed here. I have not spoken ill of Archbishop Lefebvre and I have no issue with an SSPX mass.
I also want to say that presence at a Novus Ordo concelebration or any of those ideas I am not comfortable with as myself being baptized Catholic, I have never attended a New Mass. My point here I wish to make, again, is that the East is protected because of its heritage and inherent protection mechanisms. The conclusion could be made that the Church did not defect for this reason, as it could not anyway.
Let’s amplify that…
Presence ≠ doctrinal consent
Eastern patriarchs being present at a Roman papal inauguration does not mean:
- endorsement of every theological opinion of the pope
- endorsement of the Novus Ordo as a normative expression of faith for the East
- endorsement of Vatican II’s disputed interpretations
In Eastern ecclesiology, communion is not expressed the same way as in Latin polemics. Presence is diplomatic and ecclesial, not confessional. The East has always distinguished between:
- communion (shared faith and sacraments)
- administration (who governs which church)
- ritual expression (how the faith is prayed)
The SSPX argument quietly assumes a Latin juridical model and then condemns the East for not behaving like Latins.
2. “Sacrilegious, non-Catholic rite” is an assertion, not a premise
Calling the Novus Ordo “sacrilegious and non-Catholic” is the SSPX’s conclusion, one I will agree with, but it’s not something the Eastern Churches are obliged to accept in order to remain Catholic.
From the Eastern perspective:
- They are not competent judges of the Roman rite
- They did not receive the Novus Ordo as their own
- They did not incorporate its theology into their worship
So the question “why did they attend?” assumes the East shares the SSPX’s judgment before the argument has even been proven.
That’s classic begging the question.
3. The East does not believe faith is preserved by denunciations
This is the deepest misunderstanding.
In the Byzantine tradition, faith is preserved by:
- continuity of worship
- unchanged sacramental life
- patristic theology embedded in prayer
Not by issuing condemnations every time Rome publishes a docuмent.
When heresy is imposed on worship (Iconoclasm, monothelitism), the East fights publicly and ferociously.
When it is not imposed, the East practices non-reception, which is an ancient and legitimate ecclesial response.
Silence here is not approval — it is refusal to internalize.
4. Why this argument feels arrogant (and is)
The underlying claim is this:
“Unless you fight Vatican 2 the way we do, using our categories, you are guilty.”
That’s not Catholicity. That’s Latin absolutism dressed up as traditionalism.
It reduces the Eastern Churches to:
- spectators of Latin crises
- moral cowards unless they adopt SSPX polemics
- “pretty liturgy” with no theological agency
Historically false. Theologically incoherent.
Are you claiming the above post isn't AI? I think you would have a hard time proving that. It looks JUST LIKE AI. That would make you a liar if true.
Second sentence accuses me of using AI. That’s now the fourth time in this thread, and it’s still not true. I’ll treat it as the final slander.
Are you a liar Centro? Here you say that you don't use AI, but above your post is CLEARLY AI generated in this thread. That is NO SLANDER, it is the truth. But perhaps you are so caught up with the East that you don't even realize you are using the AI... Maybe there are some other things you are missing as well, such as, how Canon 671 is against dogma.
Either way, no hard feelings from me - I would expect that you will come to see this eventually...
(https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWVjZjA1ZTQ3cWM2OWNlNjlxcnlpZGpzb2ptazZxM2x2ZGhwYzZkcmVrMGViZjdlbiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/mD5S8b0b3B39Zai0qk/giphy.gif)
-
Some commenters will do anything except be honest in able to dismiss the inconvenient truth.
I never said the Latin Rite will deteriorate. It already has. That took place when the Novus Ordo Mass was forced on tye dioceses.
Instead, I am saying that the Byzantine seeds are planted enough to grow into a legitimate defense of the Faith against the modern crisis. The SSPX, Resistance and some Sede Vacantist groups have accepted perpetual crisis management when the Truth is not that dark. Valid Catholic bishops and priests exist outside the structure of SSPX and they never became Modernists.
It’s hard to accept that one specific group isn’t going to save the Church for one certain group. It actually perpetuates the Crisis to some degree.
Your base argument is still flawed...that the Church (i.e. Trads in the West) simply abandon the Latin Rite and switch to Eastern rites.
b. Tradition in the Latin Rite is still a legit defense of the Faith, same as the Eastern rite.
c. Yes, there is a "perpetual" crisis until there's not. God decides when it's over, not us.
I still don't get your whole outlook. You found the Eastern rite and you like it. GREAT! Spread the word to as many people as you want.
But why do you feel the need to trash Western Tradition? Just leave us alone and we'll let God handle it. You go be Eastern and do your thing.
-
That’s a non-argument. Keeping a liturgy isn’t the claim, and bringing up “indulters” is a dodge meant to avoid the real issue. The question is doctrinal mutation, not ritual survival. Show where the Byzantine Churches redefined dogma, sacramental ontology, or ecclesiology. You can’t, because it didn’t happen. Pointing to disgruntled individuals, bad bishops, or internal suffering proves nothing—every orthodox body in history has suffered under corrupt hierarchs. That never determined catholicity. If persecution by modernists were the test of heresy, the entire pre-Nicene Church would fail. What you’re calling “romance” is simply refusing to confuse abuse, discipline, or politics with dogma. You’re arguing vibes because you don’t have definitions.
It's the supreme argument.
The ultimate goal of canon law and of the Church is the salvation of souls.
By aligning with Modernist authorities, the Easterns who obeyed Modernist Rome, put the Faith of theif faithful in danger. This is unacceptable.
This trumps every thing else. And every other argument you can give.
-
Your base argument is still flawed...that the Church (i.e. Trads in the West) simply abandon the Latin Rite and switch to Eastern rites.
b. Tradition in the Latin Rite is still a legit defense of the Faith, same as the Eastern rite.
c. Yes, there is a "perpetual" crisis until there's not. God decides when it's over, not us.
I still don't get your whole outlook. You found the Eastern rite and you like it. GREAT! Spread the word to as many people as you want.
But why do you feel the need to trash Western Tradition? Just leave us alone and we'll let God handle it. You go be Eastern and do your thing.
You, again, ascribe an argument to me a really never made and I have stated, “do not change rites”. I sincerely do not want Modern Trad Cats to change rites. The Latin Rite exists for a reason. And it is arguably the most beautiful rite.
The closest thing to that argument is when I stated that the Byzantine Church held the answer to the Crisis and I stand by that. I believe it does. Its theme is healing through the Eucharist and this broken world needs healing. The Latin Rite was severely compromised and fragmented. What will happen is not anything this forum can force.
It’s an inconvenient truth and as a result the last several pages have led to me using energies in defending against:
-the same repeated false positions set up as my own over and over again
-false accusations of orthodoxy, liberalism, schism, AI, opposing the Latin Rite, drinking the kool aid and being a flip flip
-unbecoming and unmannered ways of modern societal talks and slanders.
I’ve said all I want to say here. For commenters to continue to post defamatory or false positions is not intelligence, it’s just arrogance parading online for dopamine.
-
-false accusations of orthodoxy, liberalism, schism, AI, opposing the Latin Rite, drinking the kool aid and being a flip flip
-unbecoming and unmannered ways of modern societal talks and slanders.
The bold part is a lie, Centro...You did use AI in this.
-
...
The specific state of necessity I am talking about does not concern access to Mass for the laity. It concerns the extension of that necessity to episcopal consecrations.
...
Name the Easter Rite Bishops that are willing to ordain priests for the SSPX, or are willing to consecrate a bishop for them, even without Papal approval?
-
The bold part is a lie, Centro...You did use AI in this.
I don’t understand explicitly what you are accusing me of. Every google search is now A.I. A.I is built into most internet interfaces.
I was referring to the post that said my A.I. was circling and another that said because it was not me, it was A.I. One of those even quoted the post.
This is becoming childish. Every user on here uses google and A.I. built into that. My responses were genuine, my own and shared my own personal experiences. Saying they are A.I. is false and defamatory. Any honest reader can see that.
I will now argue with a handycap to even the playing field. I will no longer use google, A.I. engines, search bars, online Encyclopedias, word, Pages, notes or any other message editing interface.
Is it fair now?
-
Name the Easter Rite Bishops that are willing to ordain priests for the SSPX, or are willing to consecrate a bishop for them, even without Papal approval?
The SSPX should induct the Resistance bishops into their ranks. But unity is viewed much differently in modern Latin Rite Trad Cat circles.
-
This is becoming childish. Every user on here uses google and A.I. built into that. My responses were genuine, my own and shared my own personal experiences.
I will now argue with a handycap to even the playing field. I will no longer use google, A.I. engines, search bars, online Encyclopedias, word, Pages, notes or any other message editing interface.
Is it fair now?
I agree. that running away from the question is childish. I also have no problem at all with you using AI. My point is only that you shouldn't then get upset when others say you are throwing out "AI slop", or be surprised if some of us start to see a certain pattern in your word choices that closely mirrors AI. I think you using AI is actually for the best. Without it I do not think you will do well against my example of rupture in Canon 671, lets continue where we left of shall we?
The charge of “private judgment” misunderstands the point entirely. The argument I presented was not based on personal authority, nor on dismissing clergy or lived experience, but on pre‑Vatican II magisterial teaching, which explicitly tied sacramental discipline to dogma. Before the Council, the Church consistently taught—through Trent, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and the 1917 Code—that the sacraments belong to the visible unity of the Church and cannot be given to those who publicly remain outside that unity. That is not my invention; it is the Church’s own theological framework. To restate what the Church taught for centuries is not “appointing oneself pope,” but simply acknowledging what the magisterium itself said.
The claim that pointing out doctrinal principles is an attack on the Byzantine Churches is also misplaced. The Eastern Catholic Churches are fully Catholic, but they were bound by the same pre‑conciliar dogmatic principles regarding sacramental unity as the Latin Church. Their ancient liturgical and theological heritage was always honored, but they did not possess a parallel magisterium with a different ecclesiology. To say that sacramental discipline flowed from dogma is not an insult to the East; it is a recognition that the Catholic Church—East and West—shared one faith and one sacramental theology before the Council.
Finally, the accusation of insecurity or absolutism avoids the real issue: either sacramental discipline expresses dogma, or it does not. Pre‑Vatican II theology held that it does. That is why the Church forbade communicatio in sacris. To point out that a later discipline cannot be reconciled with earlier dogmatic principles is not emotionalism or defensiveness; it is simply taking the Church’s own pre‑conciliar teaching seriously. If dogma governs sacramental discipline, then changes in discipline must be evaluated in light of dogma—not dismissed as “paperwork,” and not reduced to personal preference. By accepting Canon 671, the Easterners deny dogma. They might not practice this denial across the board, but they have made peace with Belial by receiving this heretical, false law into their canons.
-
Your claim here is that the Roman Church issued Canon 671 in their Code of Canon Law. It involves what could be considered communicatio in sacris. I doubt you knew the term last week. You claim that because this defective Canon Law of 1983 exists and specific bishops of the Eastern Rites did not speak loudly enough for your approval, they are therefore non-Catholic heretics and outside the Church.
Your level of understanding is a waste of time to me. I’ve already dismantled this claim and similar claims on this thread. I will repeat them one last time. Not for your benefit. I do not believe you are capable of benefiting from it at this time.
The Byzantine Church does not accept docuмents from Rome as its “Faith”. It accepts what has been absorbed into its liturgical prayer as Faith. It accepts what it teaches its Faithful through its prayer life. Lex orandi, lex credendi est. It is operative in the Byzantine world, not something written in a manual.
For those of us that have been in Tradition long enough to remember Michael Davies and the Ottoviani Intervention, lex orandi, lex credendi was huge in pioneer Traditionalists arguments against the Novus Ordo Missæ. That’s why it is so fundamental here.
To actually think that, “Canon Law published in Rome says ‘such and such’ so from now on all Eastern Catholic Churches should be completely wrote off” is not an argument worthy of any real response. It’s not a “gotcha” moment. It’s weak. And emits weakness and lack of understanding.
What google search engines and A.I interfaces do is amplify intelligence…or lack thereof.
-
You, again, ascribe an argument to me a really never made and I have stated, “do not change rites”.
The closest thing to that argument is when I stated that the Byzantine Church held the answer to the Crisis and I stand by that.
:facepalm: You don't see the contradiction in your 2 statements?
-
Your claim here is that the Roman Church issued Canon 671 in their Code of Canon Law. It involves what could be considered communicatio in sacris. I doubt you knew the term last week. You claim that because this defective Canon Law of 1983 exists and specific bishops of the Eastern Rites did not speak loudly enough for your approval, they are therefore non-Catholic heretics and outside the Church.
Your level of understanding is a waste of time to me. I’ve already dismantled this claim and similar claims on this thread. I will repeat them one last time. Not for your benefit. I do not believe you are capable of benefiting from it at this time.
The Byzantine Church does not accept docuмents from Rome as its “Faith”. It accepts what has been absorbed into its liturgical prayer as Faith. It accepts what it teaches its Faithful through its prayer life. Lex orandi, lex credendi est. It is operative in the Byzantine world, not something written in a manual.
For those of us that have been in Tradition long enough to remember Michael Davies and the Ottoviani Intervention, lex orandi, lex credendi was huge in pioneer Traditionalists arguments against the Novus Ordo Missæ. That’s why it is so fundamental here.
To actually think that Canon Law published in Rome says such and such so from now on all Eastern Catholic Churches should be completely wrote off is not an argument worthy of any real response. It’s not a “gotcha” moment. It’s weak. And emits weakness and lack of understanding.
What google search engines and A.I interfaces do is amplify intelligence…or lack thereof.
No, it's the in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches :facepalm:
Canon 671 - §1. Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments only to Catholic Christian faithful,
who, likewise, licitly receive the sacraments only from Catholic ministers.
§2. If necessity requires it or genuine spiritual advantage suggests it and provided that the danger of
error or indifferentism is avoided, it is permitted for Catholic Christian faithful, for whom it is physically or
morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister, to receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist
and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers, in whose Churches these sacraments are valid.
§3. Likewise Catholic ministers licitly administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing
of the sick to Christian faithful of Eastern Churches, who do not have full communion with the Catholic Church, if they ask for them on their own and are properly disposed. This holds also for the Christian
faithful of other Churches, who according to the judgment of the Apostolic See, are in the same condition
as the Eastern Churches as far as the sacraments are concerned.
§4. If there is a danger of death or another matter of serious necessity in the judgment of the eparchial
bishop, the synod of bishops of the patriarchal Church or the council of hierarchs, Catholic ministers licitly
administer the same sacraments also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic
Church, who cannot approach the ministers of their own ecclesial communities and who request them on
their own, provided they manifest a faith consonant with that of the Catholic Church concerning these
sacraments and are rightly disposed.
§5. For the cases in §§2, 3 and 4, norms of particular law are to be enacted only after consultation with at
least the local competent authority of the non-Catholic Church or ecclesial community concerned.
-
No, it's the in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches :facepalm:
Thanks for that clarification. He’s talking about the CCEO.
-
Canon 1 of the CCEO, (Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, or Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches) for reference:
Canon 1 - The canons of this Code affect all and solely the Eastern Catholic Churches, unless, with
regard to relations with the Latin Church, it is expressly stated otherwise.
-
Thanks for that clarification. He’s talking about the CCEO.
Right, which is the Code of Canons of the Eastern (Catholic) Churches
-
Your claim here is that the Roman Church issued Canon 671 in their Code of Canon Law. It involves what could be considered communicatio in sacris. I doubt you knew the term last week. You claim that because this defective Canon Law of 1983 exists and specific bishops of the Eastern Rites did not speak loudly enough for your approval, they are therefore non-Catholic heretics and outside the Church.
No, my claim is that the Eastern churches accept that heretical law into THEIR LAWS. Ironic that it is from me that you even find this out... Maybe you should study the Eastern Canons more, or will you dismiss Canon Law as some meaningless trifle, or maybe you would like to take the Fr. Hαɾɾιson route and defend the Vatican II sect's laws tooth and nail? Is that what sounds good to you Centro, argue like our enemies, take up the weapons of those who hate tradition in order to defend your position? But are those arguments even cogent - of course not!
-
No, my claim is that the Eastern Churches accept that heretical law into THEIR LAWS. Ironic that it is from me that you even find this out... Maybe you should study the Eastern Canons more, or will you dismiss Canon Law as some meaningless trifle, or maybe you would like to take the Fr. Hαɾɾιson route and defend the Vatican II sect's laws tooth and nail? Is that what sounds good to you Centro, argue like our enemies, take up the weapons of those who hate tradition in order to defend your position? But are those arguments even cogent - of course not!
I’m not sure what you think you proved. They have a Code of Canon Law with error that promotes coomunicatio in sacris.
Ok. Does the average priest or person in the pew accept that or even know it? At what point do they stop being Catholic? When they find out and study it completely? Of course not. It doesn’t reflect what they actually believe about the Orthodox. And that’s what matters is what they believe.
That Code of Canon Law does not condemn them as heretics or schismatics if that is the claim.
-
-That Canon does not necessarily equal Communicatio in sacris
-Participation in non-Catholic religions is not inferred anywhere
-It is not an observable practice in the Byzantine Church
-It does not reflect what Byzantine Churches teach and believe about the schismatic churches
-the existence of that Canon does not mean the Byzantine Church has defected and lost Catholicity.
-after much searching this is the most that was found.
-the Byzantine Church still maintains the integrity of the Catholic Faith, true worship and valid priesthood
-no reason to believe that the Byzantine Church has ruptured unity with the Catholic Church has ever existed about this canon
-
That Code of Canon Law does not condemn them as heretics or schismatics if that is the claim.
It is a false heretical law - sharing sacraments with non-Catholics is forbidden - it is Divine Law. No one is "condemning" that is for the proper authorities at the proper time. But it is technically to be wedded to heresy and schism. Canon 671 is a denial of dogma at the very foundations of what makes the Church one in unity - a teaching I can see that you have great affection for, the "healing power of the Eucharist", but in the instance of holding communion with heretics then THAT particular Eucharist is based on a lie, the lie is that Catholics can share sacraments with heretics/schismatics that are unrepentant of their heresy/schism - it is to implode Her entire sacramental ecclesiology. You are far too quick to attribute blanket judgments to me. I really don't know who in the Eastern churches may be in the true Church at this point.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiology)
-
-That Canon does not necessarily equal Communicatio in sacris
-Participation in non-Catholic religions is not inferred anywhere
-It is not an observable practice in the Byzantine Church
-It does not reflect what Byzantine Churches teach and believe about the schismatic churches
-the existence of that Canon does not mean the Byzantine Church has defected and lost Catholicity.
-after much searching this is the most that was found.
-the Byzantine Church still maintains the integrity of the Catholic Faith, true worship and valid priesthood
-no reason to believe that the Byzantine Church has ruptured unity with the Catholic Church has ever existed about this canon
New format
-
The SSPX should induct the Resistance bishops into their ranks. But unity is viewed much differently in modern Latin Rite Trad Cat circles.
Since the SSPX does not use Resistance Bishop, which Easter Rite Bishop do you know has confirmed that he will do ordinations and consecrations for the SSPX?
-
-That Canon does not necessarily equal Communicatio in sacris
So, take up the arguments of the defenders of the Modernist church to perpetuate your claims it is...
May I ask, have you ever held Canon 844 of the 1983 code (which appears to be word-for-word the same as Canon 671 of the CCEO) to mean Communicatio in sacris?
-
I’m not sure what you think you proved. They have a Code of Canon Law with error that promotes coomunicatio in sacris.
Ok. Does the average priest or person in the pew accept that or even know it? At what point do they stop being Catholic? When they find out and study it completely? Of course not. It doesn’t reflect what they actually believe about the Orthodox. And that’s what matters is what they believe.
That Code of Canon Law does not condemn them as heretics or schismatics if that is the claim.
Yeah, I would think the "average" Eastern Catholic priest is taught in seminary who is and is not to be given the Sacraments
You are given proof that the CCEO, which applies to all Eastern Churches, allows heretics and schismatics to receive the sacraments and your argument is...what, that the average Eastern priest is too ignorant to know this? Are their seminaries deficient in teaching them the current practice of the Church?
Giving the sacraments to heretics and schismatics is condemned, and a sacrilege
-
Canon 671 is a denial of dogma
Be specific. Are you claiming that the CCEO 671 is a denial of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and that the Byzantine Church defected from the Faith when this was published?
That distinction is really the only objection you can make. But it requires you to interpret their law and show how it is applied by them in a way that supports your conclusions. Otherwise, you can only say that the Byzantine Church has preserved the True Faith. You could say it hasn’t, but it wouldn’t make you a good Catholic.
Maybe if you do that, you should apply for a job at the Vatican (or Menzingen or wherever others like you go).
-
Be specific. Are you claiming that the CCEO 671 is a denial of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and that the Byzantine Church defected from the Faith when this was published?
That distinction is really the only objection you can make. But it requires you to interpret their law and show how it is applied by them in a way that supports your conclusions. Otherwise, you can only say that the Byzantine Church has preserved the True Faith. You could say it hasn’t, but it wouldn’t make you a good Catholic.
Maybe if you do that, you should apply for a job at the Vatican (or Menzingen or wherever others like you go).
The dogma is that the EUCHARIST IS THE SACRAMENT OF UNITY
The Council of Trent teaches that the Eucharist is:
- “the symbol of that unity and charity with which Christ wished all Christians to be mutually bound and united.”
Trent, Session XIII, Chapter II
This is a dogmatic statement, because Session XIII is part of Trent’s doctrinal decree on the Eucharist.
Trent also anathematizes anyone who denies that the Eucharist is a sign of unity:
- Canon 2 (Session XIII) condemns those who deny that the Eucharist contains “the bond of charity.”
So, when the Canon 671 says they can share sacraments with heretics/schismatics, it is a DENIAL OF THIS DOGMA. They are saying that the Eucharist is NOT a sign of unity simply because they offer it to them without their needing to be ONE IN FAITH. The heretic/schismatic does not need to FIRST repent of his heresy/schism and be reconciled to the Church BEFORE he receives, it simply says, "who request them on their own, provided they manifest a faith consonant with that of the Catholic Church concerning these sacraments and are rightly disposed." How can they be "rightly disposed" when they are still professing heretics/schismatics?
-
Ok. I think your claims are all expressed clearly now.
Skid Low and World’s Way claim:
The Canon Law of the Eastern Catholic Churches was written to include the option of giving the Eucharist to a dying Orthodox christian in need that believes in the True Faith but is schismatic. The canon is an opening for abuse that denies the dogma of unity in the Eucharist and that makes the Byzantine church not a Catholic option, contaminated and non-Catholic as well as heretical.
I think that I have regurgitated your position faithfully to what you are claiming.
The claim follows the typical pattern of classic SSPX crisis evaluation. It looks weak at first, but does make a solid point, with me at least.
Do I believe that it undermines my position. No, but it does raise an eyebrow.
If the Byzantine Church were sharing Holy Communion with Orthodox and showing in its teachings that it did not believe the Orthodox to be correct, it would raise more than an eyebrow. It would signal to be religious indifferentism and I would leave my defense of it to the side. (Flipping and flopping. Right? Nah. That’s coherency.)
My advice to the both of you is that if the appearance in CCEO of 671 is enough for you to crisis police your boundary and dismiss the Byzantine Church as not Catholic, then that is your own decision that you make for your Faith. Given the issues with all the other groups holding Tradition, for me it still seems the better Catholic option.
-
I am just defending the dogma from the same perversion that the Eastern churches allow - like Modernist Rome.
Maybe they don't often or hardly ever get requests from non-Catholics for Sacraments - I won't know, and I wager you don't either, so don't pretend because you are having a great local experience that the whole Byzantine rite is untouched by this putrid and heretical non-canon from hell.
Words matter. Canons matter. praying with heretics and sharing sacraments with heretics/schismatics is forbidden - take up your gripes about it with God.
Well looky here...
https://parma.org/news/join-the-2025-byzantine-assembly-strengthening-our-liturgical-ecuмenical-mission (https://parma.org/news/join-the-2025-byzantine-assembly-strengthening-our-liturgical-ecuмenical-mission)
(https://i.imgur.com/BVyj9o1.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/NGQDgSt.png)
"Ut Unum Sint" that one is a gem...:laugh1:
Looks pretty much Modernist and all Vatican II to me.
-
I am just defending the dogma from the same perversion that the Eastern churches allow - like Modernist Rome.
Maybe they don't often or hardly ever get requests from non-Catholics for Sacraments - I won't know, and I wager you don't either, so don't pretend because you are having a great local experience that the whole Byzantine rite is untouched by this putrid and heretical non-canon from hell.
Words matter. Canons matter. praying with heretics and sharing sacraments with heretics/schismatics is forbidden - take up your gripes about it with God.
Canon 671 cannot be reconciled with the dogma that the Eucharist presupposes unity of faith and communion. No emergency clause, no appeal to disposition, and no distinction between schism and heresy removes that contradiction. A canon that permits Eucharistic communion prior to reconciliation violates perennial Eucharistic discipline, regardless of intent. That does not make the Byzantine Church heretical; it just means modern authorities codified a bad discipline and promoted bad theology in official texts.
It’s still the better option considering the options. And I’ve explored the options all over North and South America. The point of the post was severely missed on this side conversation.
-
Canon 671 cannot be reconciled with the dogma that the Eucharist presupposes unity of faith and communion. No emergency clause, no appeal to disposition, and no distinction between schism and heresy removes that contradiction. A canon that permits Eucharistic communion prior to reconciliation violates perennial Eucharistic discipline, regardless of intent. That does not make the Byzantine Church heretical; it just means modern authorities codified a bad discipline and promoted bad theology in official texts.
It does more than violate discipline. Because it is codified - it is a tacit admission of rupture and yes, it is heretical as well. It was received by the Eastern bishops, this is a real heretical practice they have in their code. They may choose not to follow it, but it is still there, held up as a holy law that will lead you to heaven if followed. But to share the Sacraments with heretics/schismatics will lead you to burn in the everlasting fires of hell.
Now the conversation could flip to the indefectibility of the Church, but since we know that the ENTIRE EAST could slide away into heresy and schism (technically possible) it would be a moot point in this thread to get into that.
-
I am just defending the dogma from the same perversion that the Eastern churches allow - like Modernist Rome.
Maybe they don't often or hardly ever get requests from non-Catholics for Sacraments - I won't know, and I wager you don't either, so don't pretend because you are having a great local experience that the whole Byzantine rite is untouched by this putrid and heretical non-canon from hell.
Words matter. Canons matter. praying with heretics and sharing sacraments with heretics/schismatics is forbidden - take up your gripes about it with God.
Well looky here...
https://parma.org/news/join-the-2025-byzantine-assembly-strengthening-our-liturgical-ecuмenical-mission (https://parma.org/news/join-the-2025-byzantine-assembly-strengthening-our-liturgical-ecuмenical-mission)
(https://i.imgur.com/BVyj9o1.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/NGQDgSt.png)
"Ut Unum Sint" that one is a gem...:laugh1:
Looks pretty much Modernist and all Vatican II to me.
This is Vatican II ecclesiology dressed up as Byzantine tradition.
-
Who is His Grace, The Most Rev. Robert M. Pipta, (2023- present)?
https://parma.org/about-bishop (https://parma.org/about-bishop)
(https://i.imgur.com/OY9W118.png)
Then go HERE (https://parma.org/bishops-teachings)
Click on the "Teaching" labeled "The Double-Headed Eagle"
(https://i.imgur.com/jmngiFp.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/L30dEn3.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4IfFYd2.png)
He is well formed in Modernism, an astute acolyte of the new religion of man.
And keep in mind, this is the supposed head of a Byzantine Eparchy to boot.
His reach extends to Byzantine Catholics in 12 states.
Lastly, take note that this docuмent is listed under the Eparchy's website under "BISHOPS TEACHING". Here we have a Byzantine Catholic bishop teaching religious freedom as taught by Vatican II.
None of this looks like positive supporting evidence for the OP's claim that there should be an, "End to the state of necessity", if that was actually the intended aim of the OP...
-
Skid Low,
I think you’re right. I knew you were right. I just wanted to see it articulated. I’ll gladly go back to what I was doing before this post. None of these topics are of serious importance to me.
-
Be specific. Are you claiming that the CCEO 671 is a denial of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus and that the Byzantine Church defected from the Faith when this was published?
That distinction is really the only objection you can make. But it requires you to interpret their law and show how it is applied by them in a way that supports your conclusions. Otherwise, you can only say that the Byzantine Church has preserved the True Faith. You could say it hasn’t, but it wouldn’t make you a good Catholic.
Maybe if you do that, you should apply for a job at the Vatican (or Menzingen or wherever others like you go).
It's the same denial of EENS as V2. The Byzantine Church has been modernized, same as the latin church (i.e. non Traditional). That canon, as worded, is heretical.
-
Skid Low,
I think you’re right. I knew you were right. I just wanted to see it articulated. I’ll gladly go back to what I was doing before this post. None of these topics are of serious importance to me.
I had a feeling.
But you just made my day, I am glad for you.
God bless.
-
That does not make the Byzantine Church heretical; it just means modern authorities codified a bad discipline and promoted bad theology in official texts.
:laugh1: Now you sound just like latin-indulters, who defend new-rome from Trads.
Satan (and his minions) infiltrated the Church and started V2. Do you really think they are THAT DUMB as to leave a huge chunk of eastern catholics with PURE Faith, and without pushing the same modernism on them? Of course, they are going to push modernism everywhere.
The idea that there is some utopia of catholicism, in a mainstream way, in the world, is a fantasy.
Catholicism. is. under. attack. everywhere. We are ALL underground. Any "mainstream" church is infiltrated.
-
:laugh1: Now you sound just like latin-indulters, who defend new-rome from Trads.
Satan (and his minions) infiltrated the Church and started V2. Do you really think they are THAT DUMB as to leave a huge chunk of eastern catholics with PURE Faith, and without pushing the same modernism on them? Of course, they are going to push modernism everywhere.
The idea that there is some utopia of catholicism, in a mainstream way, in the world, is a fantasy.
Catholicism. is. under. attack. everywhere. We are ALL underground. Any "mainstream" church is infiltrated.
I think you’re right. And I have every reason I need to never go back to a Byzantine Liturgy.
-
I, for one, would very much appreciate ElwinRansom's take on the matter. He seems very knowledgeable about the Eastern Churches, or at least more so than any of us
-
Bringing up the CCEO was great. I tried to find the SSPX reference of that in my library but couldn’t. It wasn’t in the “Catechism of the Crisis in the Faith” or any of my other SSPX sources. I think the actual SSPX reference is from the Angelus.
The Byzantine Catechism was missed. It’s called Christ Our Pascha. And it was the stronger argument by far.