http://nonpossumus-vcr.blogspot.com/The issue of marriages within the SSPX is revealing of a much deeper problem: the increasing divergence between the head and the body of the SSPX. In question, a change of attitude of the General House of the SSPX, which a large part of its base has no intention of assuming. The matter of marriages has found its first effective application there, hence the massive opposition it found on the part of deans and all the superiors of traditional religious communities.
The tension, therefore, is strong in the SSPX. While the General House, granting a right that seems not to have [1], imposes the Ordinary's delegation for all marriages, most priests oppose and refuse to ask for such delegation. Before this massive rejection, the General House imposed that the districts pass over their priests. In France, it is Fr André who is now responsible for making the request for delegation for each of the marriages to be celebrated.
We return to what is at stake in the celebration of marriage
This "imposition by force" hides the real problem raised by this request for delegation to the Ordinary, while the crisis of the Church is growing. One of the priests explained it very well in a letter addressed to his faithful, in order to explain why he could not consciously obey the order of his superiors.
"In our day, the main assault of hell against poor humanity is on marriage. No one can ignore this attack because the family is the base cell of society. Everyone has the duty to defend the marriage union in its nature, its purpose and its properties. In addition, baptized persons who confess the sacramental character of Christian marriage should protect the profession of faith which includes all marital consent. The future spouses who will be the ministers of this sacrament (a priest not "house") do not have the right to celebrate it in an equivocal way. Priests have a duty to remind them of this and to help them protect themselves from the cunning of the modernist clergy.
On April 4, 2017, Cardinal Müller announced the authorization given by the Holy Father to the bishops of the whole world to delegate a diocesan priest to bless the marriage of the faithful of the Fraternity or, in case of impossibility, Of granting to the priests of the Fraternity the necessary faculties. It was then announced that this decision of the Holy Father was going to change our current practice. You know that this practice consists in inciting the faithful to take advantage of the provisions of Canon 1098. This allows marriage without recourse to the conciliar clergy because of the grave danger to the faith that this entails. From now on we will have to turn to the bishops and act on their answers. Some priests propose a minimal cooperation to this new practice, contenting themselves with informing themselves about the bishops (not to mention the faithful ...) of what they intend to do on the line or in the framework of the letter of Cardinal Müller.
For this is where a real problem of conscience arises. Is it permissible to align or enter into that framework? It is enough to contemplate the different possible answers - answers that we will have provoked ourselves - to realize the immense difficulty.
The possibility of having a modernist priest intervene during a marriage ceremony is certainly impossible. I will not dwell on this point.
Now, if the bishop wants to send a priest from his diocese (or come himself), how can he reproach himself with doing exactly what the pope invites him to do? How can we deeply thank the Pope for his decision, write to the bishop within the framework of this decision, and then reject the positive response of the bishop? How can we praise a decision and see a "serious inconvenience" when it is applied? On the other hand, it is impossible to resort to false arguments, such as saying that it is the couple that rejects this presence of a conciliar priest, or that it is the perplexity that would engender in our faithful that would force us to reject the bishop's proposition. The shepherd must precede the flock. The priests of the Fraternity do not hide behind the perplexity of the faithful, but enlighten it.
If the bishop rejects any delegation, how then can we say that the recourse to canon 1098 would be strengthened while the serious inconvenience would be reduced to a personal matter? It is no longer the future spouses who would refuse to resort to an authority dangerous to the faith, but is such a bishop who denies such a priest in such a place and at such a time a delegation that he felt obliged to ask. The logic of this approach does not even allow us to see there an injustice, which on the other hand has never been the fundamental problem.
Finally, if the bishop gives the delegation without any conditions but always within the framework of the letter of Cardinal Müller, how to proclaim it joyfully without provoking "scruples of conscience of some faithful united to the SSPX" and without prejudice against all the others Marriages that have been or will be celebrated in our chapels? In entering into the pontifical dispositions, it would be admitted that two classes of marriage would be celebrated with us and an unjust hierarchy would be established among them. Instead of honoring the brave faithful who have resorted to the ministry of the priests of the Tradition, they will be seen, either with compassion because they did not have the happiness to find a complacent bishop, or with hostility because they did not want to enter into the dispositions Explicitly established to achieve an illusory "full communion".
Finally, is not this conciliar seal that should "secure" the marriages of our faithfuls not an invitation to turn to the diocesan officials who pronounce by thousands true "Catholic divorces" in the name of the 1983 code, revised even more lax by Francis ? Poor husbands who are willing to put their faith in danger, to violate their marital commitments and to commit adultery, unfortunately will always find a priest to bless them, even in the traditional rite. Is it fair then to weaken the convictions of all the faithful in order to "make the betrayal of some less easy?" [2]
The change of attitude of the General House
We said that this strong tension stems from a change of attitude of the highest authorities of the SSPX against the crisis that crosses the Church. We see from it a threefold repositioning:
-Relativization of the Harmfulness of the Second Vatican Council
-Silencio on the errors and scandals of the conciliar church
-Relativization of the state of necessity.
1. The relativization of the harmfulness of the Second Vatican Council
This relativization, which has been going on for some years, is not clearly spelled out, but is insinuated, distilled through speeches, interviews or letters.
"Religious freedom is used in many ways, and seeing from close up I really have the impression that not many know what the Council said about it. The Council presents religious freedom in fact very, very limited. Very limited. " ( Interview with Catholic News Services, May 11, 2012, 1:28 a.m. 1:44)
"In the Fraternity, the errors of the Council are being made of super-har- heries, which becomes like absolute evil, worse than everything, in the same way that the liberals have dogmatized that pastoral council. The evils are already dramatic enough to exaggerate them more. " (Letter to the 3 Bishops, April 14, 2012).
Examples could be multiplied. What is seen in this is that in these moments of irenism, the council is only seen in its materiality, regardless of its omnipresent and dangerous liberal spirit, since liberalism, with its substitute that is modernism, are the sewer of all Heresies. These interventions by the superiors do not happen without creating tensions within the SSPX. Since the liberal struggle is inscribed in the same genes of the work of Monsignor Lefebvre, then the "OGM priests" [Genetically Modified Organisms, note of NP] appear before the "BIO priests" [without genetic contamination, note of NP ].
2. The silence on the errors and scandals of the conciliar church
It is from 2011 that quasi-systematic silences can be observed when the scandalous acts (which lead to sin) raised by the same pope, apparently converted into untouchable, were to be denounced. This is seen in the official communication of the SSPX during the 2011 interfaith meeting in Assisi during the canonization of John Paul II (2014), before, during and after the Synod of the family. This is also true during the establishment of a "Catholic divorce" or the reform of marriage annulment proceedings, in the case of Amoris Laetitia or the rehabilitation of Luther. Nor was there a word about the solemn reception of his statue in the Vatican on October 13, while that day, also in the Vatican, a possible prelature for the SSPX was being negotiated in the next room. "He" quijoteó with a communiqué in this respect, without allusion to the terrible scandal that was stained this anniversary day of the apparitions of Fatima.
This silence has its importance. In April 2011 Pope John Paul II was beatified. The SSPX made its dubia appear shortly before this beatification, a publication that would have precipitated the termination of the doctrinal discussions then underway between the Holy See and the SSPX. You can not continue shooting at the one with whom you negotiate, you have to choose. Then the FSSPX chose in the course of this year 2011, when it relaunched the negotiation process in September, with a view to a purely practical agreement. This silence is therefore a prerequisite to all agreement. A prerequisite: not a concession for the future, from the day reconciliation is a fact, but a prerequisite to live today, and actually lived since September 2011. This prerequisite is not said, but has been in force for years . And it is much more dangerous that it is not written, but it conditions a whole attitude, which time has not stopped making more and more ambiguous.
We find there one of the root causes of the tensions within the SSPX. For if the authorities of the SSPX wanted to pass this change of attitude by a simple modernization of their communication to make it more positive and more attractive (the famous "branding"), many priests of this society have not been deceived. Many even feel the duty to shout so loudly that their superiors are silent, and we have thus witnessed a real war of communication, opposing those who were previously united in the same combat.
3. The relativization of the state of necessity
Consistent with these first points of tension, a third appears today openly with the issue of marriages. This is to relativize the state of necessity in which we find ourselves today, in other words, to relativize the quasi-universality of the crisis that crosses the Church. For some years, the official communication of the General House has liked to emphasize how the prelates, bishops and cardinals who are supposedly increasingly attached to the authentic Tradition of the Church, become truly new in their eyes; As if Monsignor Lefebvre had not met the cardinals Oddi, Stickler, or others ...
But with the issue of marriages, this relativization of the state of necessity is for the first time openly assumed as such. It is true that its existence is remembered by the "authorized commentaries" and the successive "clarifications" published by the General House, but with a limit of which it is important to be aware. By principle, it is no longer presented as a general crisis of faith touching the quasi-universality of bishops (how to use them in a habitual way?), But only because of the deficiencies related to marriage, which is the only thing that It is important to preserve in the present case.
In addition, when the pope's attitude has never been so scandalous, the official communication of the SSPX affirms for its part that the case of necessity decreases today. This is indeed what we read under the pen of Father Knittel, in the official magazine of the General House "Nouvelles de Chrétienté":
"This state of necessity has begun to reverse with the Motu Proprio of July 7, 2007, where Benedict XVI acknowledged that the traditional mass has never been abrogated. The decisions of Pope Francis on the apostolate of the SSPX accentuate this movement. "
From a practical point of view, such discourse conditions the state of necessity to the obtaining or not of concrete personal advantages, in other words, to subjectivate it, and this independently of the increasingly serious objective situation, which is forgotten. Hence there is a new tension between the priests of the SSPX, and the deans who remember for their part the true nature of this state of necessity:
" As you know, unfortunately there is no doubt about the extraordinarily dramatic situation facing the Church [3]. This is still suffering today, and now more intensely, what Monsignor Lefebvre called "the master stroke of Satan": "To spread revolutionary principles by the same authority of the Church." We see the authorities of the Church, from the seat of Peter to the parish priest, to attack the Catholic faith directly through a corrupt humanism that, taking to the pinnacle the cult of conscience, destroys Our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, Christ's kingship over human societies is simply ignored or opposed, and the Church is taken by this liberal spirit that manifests itself especially in religious freedom, ecuмenism and collegiality. Through this spirit, it is the very nature of the Redemption realized by Christ that is questioned, it is the Catholic Church, the only ark of salvation, which is denied in fact. The same Catholic morality, already shaken in its foundations, is overthrown by Pope Francis, for example when he explicitly opens the way to the communion of the divorced who are remarried and who make marital life .
This dramatic attitude of the ecclesial authorities undoubtedly carries a state of necessity for the faithful. In fact, there is not only a serious inconvenience but a real danger in putting his salvation in the hands of shepherds imbued with this "adulterous spirit" [5] ... For those who maintain that such a practice would now be invalid because the authorities Ecclesiastical offer a possible delegation on the part of the Ordinary, we reply that the state of necessity that justifies our action is more dogmatic than canonical and that the impossibility of resorting to existing authorities is not physical but moral .
We understand then the last and supreme point of tension between the priests of the SSPX: some, taking into account the increasingly serious situation that crosses the quasi-universality of the Church, protect themselves with increasing prudence. The others, because the danger is diminishing in their eyes, only aspire to a total regularization of their situation and a canonical recognition. Taken to the extreme, this tension has led and will undoubtedly lead to even more exits of priests, either towards resistance, sedevacantism or conciliar.
conclusion
The distance traveled by the authorities of the SSPX in some years becomes manifest if we listen to the sermon given by Bishop Fellay on August 4, 2009 in San Nicolás de Chardonnet:
" Dear brothers, do not be surprised if the Fraternity practically does not move when the invitations of Rome come to a new reconciliation after the appearance of this motu proprio. Well, this will take time. It is a state of mind in the Church that must be changed, and more than a state of mind, are principles. It is necessary that authority in the Church recognize these deadly principles that paralyze the Church for forty years. While this is not done, it is rather difficult to think of a practical agreement. And because? Because when these principles govern the life of the Church, when there is the least difference, it will be arranged in the name of these evil principles. This means that a practical agreement in these circuмstances is lost in advance. It is to question all this combat that we celebrate today, would be a total contradiction with what we have said so far. That is not what we want, obviously we want a normal state of things, but that does not depend on us. If we find ourselves in this situation it is not because we have loved it. Again, it is out of necessity. And this need continues. "
Force is to note that the bad principles denounced so by Msgr. Fellay in 2009 have not changed in Rome, and that its application becomes increasingly bad under the government of Pope Francis. But it must also be noted that if Rome has not changed, Menzingen has made its revolution. But not all his priests, hence the tensions present.
In this storm that the SSPX is going through, the decisive moment will undoubtedly come in the general chapter of this religious society, foreseen in its statutes for July 2018. First, it must pronounce itself on this triple repositioning of the authorities of the SSPX to validate them or Revoke them. From there will come the continuation or implosion of the SSPX.
Christian Lassale
________________________
[1] - See article "The issue of marriages, what is it?" In MPI.
[2] - Cf. Father Camper's article: " Exceptionnel "
[3] Even when there is doubt as to the existence of this exceptional situation authorizing the use of the extraordinary form of marriage, it should be emphasized that, under the law, the church would replace the lack of jurisdiction (Code of 1917, Canon 209, code 1983, canon 144), thus keeping the act fully valid.
Topic: Maximum tension in the priests of the SSPX (Read 3978 times)