CathInfo.com

"With the shepherds indisposed, as Catholics, we need to submit to a legitimate authority to practice our faith. Such is the constitution of the Church - no Catholic is sufficient to himself. The Society of St. Pius X was originally founded to train priests but it has subsequently been forced into the role of an emergency hierarchy – not in opposition to the official hierarchy, but filling the gaps where the official hierarchy is morally absent. In practical terms, this means that those who attend a Society Mass Centre should see the priest who has charge of the Mass Centre their parish priest. He has an authority which binds under sin when properly exercised. The idea that the crisis in the Church liberates the faithful from ecclesiastical authority is pure liberalism!  https://fsspx.uk/en/news-events/news/staying-catholic-ite-missa-est-editorial-50218

Dear *****,

What Fr B writes is an attempt to solve the insoluble.  When a Pope is as destructive of the Church as Francis who at least seems to be the present Pope, and when the large part of the Church hierarchy has for 60 years been sliding into apostasy, then Catholics have an insoluble problem, until the day when the Pope and heirarchy are put back on their feet by Almighty God -- nobody less can do that.

In the meantime Catholics as Catholics cannot not feel the need and desire for God's own authority to guide them to Heaven with authoritative commands.  But the need does not create the reality for so long as God does not rescue His wayward representatives. Authority cannot come from below, by definition. All that can come from below is some substitute for God's own authority because that authority only descends down the hierarchy from the Pope.

Therefore, strictly speaking, Fr B is out of line. More loosely speaking he is making the best of a bad job. Archb. L. said that Catholics should treat their SSPX pastors as their authoritative pastors. And if these pastors stay on track, God will no doubt expect them to be followed by the Catholic laity. But we see what has happened to the SSPX !   What would the Archbishop say today ?  He could no longer be saying, treat your SSPX pastors as authoritative pastors. He would have to be saying, follow them as long as you judge them to be faithful, and pray that the Holy Ghost give you good judgment. He could not possibly be saying, follow them unconditionally. He himself never followed the Conciliar Popes unconditionally, but always conditionally upon their keeping the Faith, which he judged by the docuмents and catechisms of 2000 years of Church history.

In conclusion, I can understand Fr B writing what he has here written, but I would never have written it myself as it stands.  Catholics are in greater difficulty by the collapse of the hierarchy, but they are also  in greater possibility of merit by having to do without a hierarchical authority to get to Heaven.

I hope this is clear.    

Seraphina: When every priest says something different, and when those priests instruct to keep away from the other priests, their Masses and Sacraments, the flock is left with mob rule.  When a single lamb finds itself put out by the flock, it finds itself under self-rule, doomed to failure.