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.

• 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.

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.

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.

• extraordinary jurisdiction indefinitely
• unauthorized episcopal consecrations
• parallel hierarchies
• suspension of normal canonical obedience

• 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.

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.

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.