Canon Law is designed for the proper ordering of the Church in normal times. In times of disarray, confusion, persecution, necessity, and turmoil, apart from those elements in Canon Law that are mere restatements of Divine Law or natural law, the rest are prudential calculations for keeping proper order in the Church during normal times, with all of them ultimately being ordered toward the salus animarum. And, during normal times, that's exactly what those laws do. In times of crisis, however, some of the human-law canonical provisions could in fact militate against the overaching principle of the salvation of souls. In normal times, during the 1940s or 1950s, no priest could just decide to break off and set up his own chapel and his own "Society" of priests. But during things like persecution under the Communists or the Arian crisis (where orthodox bishops went around consecrating Catholic bishops that had been usurped by Arians), or now the Conciliar Crisis, where 95% of the putative hierarchy and faithful demonstrably lack the Catholic faith (denying, by their own polls, one dogma or another), and yet have wrested control of the material offices from Catholics, all that goes out the window. There's such a thing as material error as well, such as the famous case of St. Vincent Ferrer siding with an Antipope. Did he thereby lose his "canonical mission"? Of course not, since theologians explain that you can retain your jurisdiction (such as for him to hear Confessions) even via "color of title". This is a Salza-esque reduction of the Church to legalisms (and human-law legalisms at that), to the point that those guys must conclude that Joe Biden is more Catholic than Archbishop Lefebvre.
Here's a solid example of where lower-level laws are ordered to the higher-level, and if the lower-level laws militate against the higher-level laws, not only are they no longer binding, but in fact they are prohibited by the higher-level law against which they militate. We are required to rebuke the sinner. But, as St. Thomas and St. Augustine explain, not only are we not bound to rebuke a sinner if we judge in prudence that he will not be corrected, but we may even be forbidden from doing so if we judge that the sinner would double down and be even worse if rebuked. Why? Because the overarching and guiding principle is the correction and salvation of the sinner, and that is the higher end to which the law/command to rebuke sinners is rightly ordered, and in some cases rebuking the sinner could in fact militate against that end, so in rebuking the sinner you might be undermining the rationale for why (under normal circuмstances) we are required to rebuke sinners. [There are, of course, other prudential considerations here, such as the sinner's possible effect on others, etc. ... which are omitted here for the sake of simplicity and assumed not to factor into the scenario.]
I also like how Salza / Siscoe made up this principle that if you don't have "mission" from the Church, miracles are required to prove that God gave you a mission. This is hogwash, and they're thinking of examples like St. Paul, who was sent as an Apostle in an extraordinary fashion, but that was a different time in the Church. In reality, under normal circuмstances, no purpurted "miracle" could supply for lack of "mission" in the Church. So some priest in the 1930s works some "miracles" and that becomes proof that he has a direct divine mission to set up his own chapel not in communion with the Holy See? Ridiculous. Nor are miracles required to act outside of normal canon law, since we know of no miracles performed by a St. Athanasius, who went around replacing Arian bishops who had usurped various Sees, often doing so not only without the Pope's blessing but even against his wishes (though the latter may arguably have been only under duress).
If you take Salza's absurd position to its logical conclusion, if in fact some Arian had usurped the papacy (been elected by Arian Cardinals), which was, naturally speaking, a real possibility, since some estimates were that 97-99% of the episcopal sees had been usurped by Arians, then the Arian pope would be the Church, and the Arians he appointed would have been the legitimate bishops with their "mission" while those whom he excommunicated, like St. Athanasius et al., would have been outside the Church. Talk about some kind of diabolical inversion in the thinking of ex(?)-Freemason John Salza.
Topic: Lawful Clergy in Modern Times (Read 1422 times)