It was in 2012 that Bishop Fellay submitted his Six Conditions, only Three of which were termed essential, for the SSPX to be integrated within the Novus Ordo structures. They were: 1, Freedom to criticize Vatican II (that is, within the stipulations of Donum Veritatis, CDF instruction on the vocation of theologians, and the 1989 Profession of Faith vowing submission of the "mind and will to the authentic magisterium"); 2, legal permission to use the 1962 Bugnini transitional extra-ordinary form of the Novus Ordo Missal, and 3, a bishop chosen from their own ranks.
These three sine qua non conditions are an open admission that as far as they were concerned a state of emergency no longer exists and therefore, it was an abandonment of any obligation regarding the rights of Traditional faithful. From that time onward, the SSPX became a group of conservative priests with traditional sentiments without any real purpose eventually even accepting "jurisdiction" from the Novus Ordo to do what they had always done. This sermon is an effort to redefine the SSPX's and invent a purpose for its existence. The sermon is like listening to an improvised Act IV of a three act tragedy.
The SSPX was never a religious order. It is a simple ad hoc pious union of priests whose entire justification for being was the aggrieved rights of traditional Catholic faithful. When these rights, as they understand them, were then met by local ordinaries, the SSPX lost its purpose for existing. This sermon is an attempt to redefine the SSPX as a religious order, like the Dominicans, that has its own chrism independent of the current crisis in the Church that sparked its formation. Their new job description is the formation of "holy priests."
It is true that religious orders like the Dominicans began as an ad hoc efforts addressing a particular crisis but developed a broader religious purpose from understanding the ultimate nature of the crisis and recognizing that the current crisis is just one manifestation of possible problems sharing a common etiology. This has never happened with the SSPX because the SSPX has never understood the nature of the fight. Archbishop Lefebvre never looked to the most fundamental causes of the current crisis in the Church and therefore never formulated any effective plan of correction beyond simple remedial corrections of evident evil consequences while never addressing essential causes.
It has always been from the beginning a crisis of Faith. Modernism and its variation, Neo-modernism, is the heresy that must be confronted today. Heresy is the denial of dogma by definition. A heretic is someone who does not hold dogma as their rule of faith and thus denies a reveal truth that has been formally defined by the Magisterium. Modernism is the "synthesis of all heresies" in that it attacks as its primary end not one individual dogma but all dogmas as dogma. It attacks dogma in its very nature. The only possible way to defend the Faith against Modernism is by reaffirming dogma qua dogma and holding it as the proximate rule of faith. Truth is the one and only weapon against an abuse of authority.
Archbishop Lefebvre never got this right. He believed that any good willed Jew as a Jew, Moslem as a Moslem, Protestant as a Protestant, Buddhist as a Buddhist, etc., etc. can be in a state of grace, a temple of the Holy Ghost, a secret member of the Church and obtain salvation without belief in any revealed truth, without receiving any sacrament, and without being subject to the Roman Pontiff. Every dogma touching upon what is necessary as a necessity of means for salvation was overturned and the methodology used to overturn these dogmas is exactly the same methodology used by all Neo-modernists. +Lefebvre therefore had no principled argument against John Paul II's Prayer Meeting at Assisi even though he was so scandalized from the event that he consecrated the four bishops. What could he say against John Paul II for this blasphemy? If those at the Prayer Meeting at Assisi could be in the state of grace why not pray with them just as every Catholic prays with other Catholics on any given Sunday? Catholics pray together with other Catholics because they enter the Church through the sacraments, stand in a common profession of faith, and submit to the same authority. These were the sine qua non conditions for the possibility of being in the state of grace. If this is not true, if the only actual condition is the belief in and the 'desire to do the will of a god who rewards and punishes,' then everyone at the Prayer Meeting of Assisi could be in the state of grace. Why not pray with them?
+Lefebvre's second great error was that he regarded immemorial ecclesiastical traditions as matters of mere discipline and not as necessary attributes of the Faith by which it can be known and communicated to others. The destruction of our immemorial ecclesiastical traditions is just another form of the Iconoclast heresy but +Lefebvre never opposed this destruction with the truth of Catholic dogma. He only opposed the direction of the reform and not the reform itself considering the immemorial ecclesiastical traditions as matters of mere discipline open to the free and independent will of the legislator.
This is the legacy of Archbishop Lefebvre and explains why the SSPX never became a religious order. St. Dominic did not criticize the Carthusians who were tasked with preaching to the Cathars for any doctrinal deficiency. Their error consisted in their worldliness. They were deficient in poverty, prayer and mortification. The Dominicans he founded were to be holy, educated priests that were both contemplative and active and consequently they were perfect for any crisis the Church might meet. The SSPX has no answer to the current crisis in the Church because they have never addressed its fundamental underpinnings. This is not to be overly critical of +Lefebvre because he was as much a victim of the compromises with Neo-modernism as others such as Msgr. Joseph Fenton and Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. regarding the undermining of dogma and our immemorial ecclesiastical traditions, but we should know better having witnessed the destruction of the Church over these past fifty years.
It's too late for the SSPX. Theoretically they could turn things around but practically speaking, there is no chance outside a real miracle. But here is the greater tragedy. If the resistance does not understand why the SSPX failed, they will be no more successful in addressing the current crisis.
Drew
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