Yes, this is the usual SSPX response (propaganda, really) from the fallout of the expulsion of the Nine. There are, in fact, many deep problems with this reasoning that the Society has employed, but for brevity I will just cover two.

St. Thomas is indeed correct, but the real question is the minor: does the principle apply in this case? And does the SSPX even follow their own principle?

The SSPX themselves do not submit to lawful authority on the reforms of Holy Week, as I and many others before me have pointed out. John XXIII did not even submit to the authority of his predecessor in this case. Nor did many priests of the day who quietly refused to adopt the changes, and we commend them for it, for it was these same priests who several decades later would assist the SSPX in setting up her chapels in various places. The SSPX have maintained certain pre-reformed rubrics that were explicitly removed by Pius XII in the 1955 edition and further by John XXIII in the 1962 edition. In these particular rubrics, there is certainly no danger to the faith, yet the rubrics were maintained. The SSPX does not have the lawful authority to do this and, more so, violate St. Thomas's principle.

This point expands even more strongly to their use of the 1962 missal and 1960 office. The Society regularly disregards many rubrics of the reformed books. Most priests maintain certain pre-62 rubrics; many incorporate '65-'67 rubrics, up to and including senior priests of various districts. But again, contra St. Thomas and the authority of the Church, who alone oversees all rubrical matters, the SSPX, much less individual priests, does not have the authority to make such changes.

In fact, an impartial study of the case suggests strongly that the commitment to the reformed Holy Week as well as the 1962 missal is more an overreaction to the exaggerations of the Nine, whose actions threatened to undermine +Lefebvre's negotiations with JPII leading up to 1984. This was unacceptable. Most scholarly consensus on the Roman rite since the 1980s has shown again and again how the reforms are predicated on falsified "evidence", motivated often explicitly by strong ideological agenda, all in the direction of the Novus Ordo. The Pacellian Holy Week is filled with textbook examples of the very error of antiquarianism that the same pontiff condemned just years earlier.

The inability to move past this past "baggage" is the reason why I do not believe the reformed Holy Weeks will disappear anytime soon. And as the neo-SSPX has deepened their entanglement with Rome, they must double down on their apparent rejection of sedevacantism or anything that reeks of extremism in order to maintain favor with the Vatican.

The second problem, which I will not go too far into, is that while St. Thomas's axiom is necessary, it is not sufficient. And the reason it is not sufficient is easy to demonstrate. If we who have the benefit of hindsight were given a time machine to go back to 1948 to warn Pius XII of the chain of liturgical changes initiated by him that would eventually lead to the Novus Ordo, we would have no grounds to dissuade him by referring to St. Thomas's principle alone. In other words, the question of danger to the faith would have stopped none of the liturgical changes that led finally to the Novus Ordo, which was all done in the name of the same ideological principles and "scholarship". But we cannot accept the Novus Ordo. Therefore, at some point, an additional theological consideration has to be brought in to halt Pius XII. But what could we tell him that would possibly give him pause? We cannot rely on "feelings" of impending doom. We cannot say we don't "like" Mgr Bugnini or Fr Bouyer etc. We cannot merely say Jungmann and Fortescue were wrong (at this point, they weren't yet proven to be wrong). What theological principle could we posit? Fr Cekada attempted once to answer this, but I believe with mixed success. It requires greater minds than ours.

And that gets to the heart of the question, even until now unresolved, and may be for many more generations. The SSPX is not concerned with this question, unfortunately. But I have found the small experiences telling when meeting not a few individuals who grew up in the chapels and churches that used the pre-reformed Holy Week and who later attended Society chapels and were confused, even shocked, at the differences. For those who breathed in the atmosphere of the old Roman rite from their childhood, even the SSPX felt jarringly modern to these laity untrained in theology or liturgy. If you can say the Pater together one day of the year, why not every day? Nothing dangerous to the faith in that. It would be blasphemous to say otherwise, would it not? Ah, but now we have a dilemma that St. Thomas cannot resolve for us. 

And I have met many who came from the Novus Ordo who told me that they felt the reformed Holy Week was a mostly Latinized version of what they already experienced in the Novus Ordo but felt the pre-reformed Holy Week very foreign. 

These experiences, while anecdotal, are telling data. Is there danger to the faith? Well, that is a tricky analysis sometimes, as even our beloved Bp. Williamson will admit...

+Lefebvre initially complied with the '65 from his default of obedience.  He noticed from certain changes (less genuflections, Signs of the Cross) that his own faith was being chipped away at.  Upon noticing, he applied the principle of St. Thomas.  Therefore his brief compliance with the '65 was objectively not justified, and subjectively completely justified.

Surely Bugnini and others introduced certain things with their goals in mind.  However whatever things they managed to introduce in the reformed Holy Week clearly do not in themselves endanger the Faith.  By '65 they had indeed inserted the first real dangers.

As the pre-'65 Missals were presented as mandatory by the authorities, I would be interested to learn from whom Fr. Cekada draws the principle that would classify these books as optional.

Was the reformed Holy Week an attack on the Mass?  Was it a destabilizer?  Does it constitute a real departure from the received and approved rites?  I don't have the formation to judge correctly, God spare me from pretending to!  I am sure the Archbishop did ponder these questions.  He certainly did have the formation to judge these things, at least more than anybody else between 1965 and the Consecration of Russia.

Was the new Holy Week a major conquest that Bugnini later boasted?  No.  Will the next good pope return to the old Holy Week?  Possibly, perhaps even probably.  Meanwhile we must obey until someone can find a real danger to the Faith in the reform.

The line in the sand is the danger to the Faith.  The further reforms of the Novus Ordo do not change the acceptability of the '69.  It remains on the far side of the line in the sand.

It isn't correct to say the Eastern Friday liturgies only focus on the burial of Christ; that applies to their Vespers. But they too have Matins and the other hours, in which they read the entire Passion narratives from all four Gospels including the institution of the Eucharist, and they display special icons of the Passion, crucifixion, and death of our Lord.

Sure, but the only ones I've seen publicly offered to the faithful is the Liturgy focused on the burial.

Indeed Bugnini was involved in the reform of Holy Week.  However he was not by that time President of the Liturgical Commission.  The President, Mgr D'Amato, was very traditionalist, later ousted by the Modernists.  He prevented the reformers of Holy Week from introducing dangers to the Faith.

Just some points of fact since your timeline seems to be quite confused. "By that time" Mgr d'Amato was not even on the very commission you claim he was president of!

Mgr d'Amato was never president of the liturgical commission involved in the Holy Week reforms, of which commission he became a member only in 1960, long after the reforms had taken place and were mandated, and even for the conciliar liturgical commission, he was only ever a member. D'Amato had absolutely nothing to do with the Holy Week reforms, and at Vatican II was more involved in the area of sacred music for the preparation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, according to the relationes.

Whether and to what extent he was involved in John XXIII's liturgical reforms leading to what we know as the 1960 breviary and 1962 missal, I do not know, but I would like to see more proof on this other than Mgr Lefebvre's personal testimony in a passing conference. It seems unlikely given that D'Amato didn't begin to become involved in the commission until 1960 itself, and then only as a member. Bugnini relates that the later members were only involved in a couple meetings.

Second point of fact, what is in our circles called "Bugnini's schema" in the preparatory stages of Vatican II's liturgical reform was not shot down by the then-president of the conciliar liturgical commission, Gaetano Cicognani, but in fact signed without changes. It was only after this episode that John XXIII removed Bugnini from his positions. But to stay to the point, Bugnini's principal work in the Pian commission had already been finished long before Vatican II.

While some traditionalists wish to downplay the role Bugnini had in these commissions, it should be remembered there were plenty of other aggressive and powerful members pushing for liturgical modernism: Augustin Bea, Carlo Braga, Ferdinando Antonelli, etc. All of these were quite open about their intentions.

The liturgical commission's work on the Holy Week, as reported by Bugnini himself as well as others, was done in complete secrecy and when published came as a surprise to the Sacred Congregation of Rites. The commission had direct access to Pius XII during his final illness because Bea, a member of the commission, was also Pius's confessor. There was absolutely no one to "prevent the reformers".

Was the new Holy Week a major conquest that Bugnini later boasted?  No.

You are allowed to your opinions, but not to your facts. Bugnini boasted indeed of the Holy Week reforms and this entire period of liturgical reform multiple times in several places. He speaks of this period of the liturgical reforms as a nearly complete success and in the most effusive language, of "pearls and crowns" and "an explosion of joy". Please simply open his memoirs and read.

Braga, Bugnini's close collaborator and of the same mind, also boasted of the Holy Week reforms as "the head of the battering-ram which pierced the fortress of our hitherto static liturgy." Cardinal Antonelli, mentioned above, described it as "the most important act in the history of the liturgy from St. Pius V until today."

+Lefebvre initially complied with the '65 from his default of obedience.  He noticed from certain changes (less genuflections, Signs of the Cross) that his own faith was being chipped away at.  Upon noticing, he applied the principle of St. Thomas.  Therefore his brief compliance with the '65 was objectively not justified, and subjectively completely justified.

Surely Bugnini and others introduced certain things with their goals in mind.  However whatever things they managed to introduce in the reformed Holy Week clearly do not in themselves endanger the Faith.  By '65 they had indeed inserted the first real dangers.

Again, these are strange remarks. Lefebvre was not a liturgist, as he himself would have admitted. Econe used the '65-'67 changes well into the 1970s, and the decision to stop these were prompted by the seminarians who wanted to return to a purer form of the Roman rite. Even Fr Josef Bisig of the FSSP recounts some of the stories during this period when he was a seminarian.

But the remarks are further strange because there are many Society priests even today who regularly incorporate these rubrics into their "1962" ceremonial. As I said, even senior priests of multiple districts will use rubrics from '65 and '67 without any problem, priests who were ordained in the 1990s. The Society has never been focused on the question of liturgy per se, but rather the formation of priests. Even when deciding upon 1962, it was as a matter of danger to the faith.

Lastly, it is Bugnini himself who links directly the principles that went behind the reform of Holy Week and the changes John XXIII would introduce more widely in 1960-62, changes that were the fruit of the liturgical commission.

While it is not my goal to draw a direct line of causality between these changes and a "danger to the faith," again as I said above, the line of argumentation is clearly insufficient. Liturgical scholars who have studied this time period and who try to remain impartial when discussing the history have called out how plainly the break is from tradition and the integrity of the work between 1948-1975. These are from figures as varied as Mgr Gamber, Don Alcuin Reid, Laszlo Dobszay, and more recently, the excellent work of Matthew Hazell. And again, these are not SSPX enthusiasts. If even these can see the break, why can't the Society? Well, that gets to the "baggage" I was referring to.

Pardon my mistake about Msgr D'Amato.  That story belongs to the Missal of '62, not the reformed Holy Week.

Whoever the Holy Ghost used, or whether He chose not to use a human instrument at all, the result was still a prevention of dangers to the Faith being introduced in the reformed Holy Week.

Yes we could extend this thread many pages with examples saying, "Look at this one.  I don't like it and we have proof that Bugnini meant to advance towards such-and-such an error with this."  Granted.  But where is a single example where we could say, "Look at this.  This is of itself a danger to the Faith."

Then let's look at a clear example. Bugnini himself provides it.

Bugnini admitted in L'Osservatore Romano that the added title to Intercession VII of Good Friday: "For the unity of the Church" is heretical since the Church is already one. For this reason, in the 1965 edition, they had to rename the prayer to "For the unity of Christians". At the same time, they finally removed the words "heretics" and "schismatics," thus overcoming any obstacles to ecuмenism. Thus in the reformed Holy Week itself, you have a heretical title to a prayer that begins to distort the meaning of the prayer (and reveals the trajectory the Consilium wanted to take later) vs. the 1965 text where there is no heretical content yet the prayer is so watered down as to be meaningless. Which is better? Worse? Which is the greater "danger to the faith"? Do we really want to play such games? Is not the safer, more prudent route to return to the traditional liturgies, before being marred by modernists?

Interestingly, the Angelus Press edition of the 1962 missal retitles this intercession as: "For heretics and schismatics". An interesting act of retcon editorializing! If there is no problem with this Holy Week, why the illicit change which they have no authority to make? Did they perceive a problem with the actual title, as Bugnini noted? Far be it from the Society to use a problematic liturgy! Far be it from the Society to change rubrics and texts, especially to preserve anodyne appearances! 

I think people get lost in the weeds on this issue when they analyze it from an exceedingly legalistic viewpoint. I think that finding a "canonically legitimate" solution is impossible for us, unless of course we elect to use the unique lex orandi of the Catholic Church...

We have the advantage of historical hindsight. We know that a freemason oversaw the Pian reform of the Holy Week and that this was done in order lay the foundation for the general reform resulting in the NOM. Who could be criticized for not wanting to have anything to do with this?

This problem of a bad title can be rectified without changing a single word of what the celebrant says, or a single gesture.

The question is never "which is better", the question is: "is it a danger for the Faith, yes or no".

Unfortunately, I believe the force of this example was lost on you, NIFH. Without intending any condescension, please allow me to point it out as well as for those who are reading. Unfortunately, it's impossible for me to be brief.

Indeed, it is a title that is not read in the liturgy itself. Anyone without a missal would not be aware of its existence. You are correct to note this, but you did not follow out the consequences.

Bugnini was forced to admit, in the Vatican's official, daily publication of its activities, in other words, in an act of public self-humiliation, that one of the changes introduced by the Pian commission was heretical. Yet it was not in the prayers or gestures themselves, no, but in a title for a prayer. The liturgical commission had to change a heretical title to a prayer that no one would otherwise be aware of, reflecting the utmost seriousness with which Holy Mother Church has traditionally guarded her liturgy!

This was the reason for the absolute secrecy of the liturgical commission's activity reforming Holy Week, as Bugnini admits in his memoirs of this period, and for the shock of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. The SCR had no authority to overturn the entire reform, since it was authorized by Pius XII himself. Bea, Bugnini, Antonelli, etc. had to bypass the scrutiny of the SCR.

Yet the floodgates had already been opened. By 1965, although the heretical title was replaced due to external pressures, there were already enough influential figures within the institution to begin watering down the prayers into insignificance, and the monthly changes to the liturgy overwhelmed even the most obsequious priests, wishing to follow the "Church" into utter chaos. The revolutionaries no longer needed the heretical title; they could render the prayers flacid and impotent with modernism without fear of backlash.

Hence the answer to the question, is it a danger to the Faith, Holy Mother the Church herself gave the resounding answer: YES. Even if no one ever read or saw the title? YES, a danger to the Faith, for heresy now touched the beating heart of Christendom, the most holy liturgy, during the most sacred and solemn time of the liturgical year. If it was no danger to the faith or to anyone, then why did the title have to be changed? Why the publicly embarrassing admission from Bugnini? Rather, the Church insisted on the correction. And if she insisted on it, we must see it as objectively, gravely problematic. If the modernists could strike here with the battering ram, as Braga boasted, then the fortress would be pierced, and it was.

This is the force of the example. We should be concerned even at the level of unread titles in the books. This is the mens Ecclesiae. Not our private interpretations of what constitutes a "danger to the faith," no, what does the Church herself consider a danger?

That with all of this information, all of the explicitly revolutionary agenda of these modernists, easily available in this day and age, plus with the benefit of 60 years of hindsight at the disasters, that a "traditionalist" would try to defend this novelty is mind-boggling. Yet people defend it simply because unfortunately they replace the magisterium with the SSPX: if the SSPX uses it, it must be traditional, it must be safe! If one thinks the Society is always a safe guide to tradition, then I will merely point out the debacle of their articles defending the use of the Covid vaccination, which go further than even modernist Rome's own moral theology.

And for the Archbishop, some think the Archbishop could never make a mistake! No, the holy Archbishop was indeed fallible, certainly guided by supernatural counsel in the darkest and most confusing of times, and yet, clearly making some imprudent decisions here and there. He was not a liturgist; he simply recognized the supreme importance, psychologically, spiritually and culturally, of stability, of unity of purpose. This stability, rootedness, the anchor of tradition, was his leitmotif in his decisions and how he formed and governed the Society. He used the best that he had available at the time, given the limited understanding of the full consequences.

But now we have the benefit of additional hindsight. Now we are in a better position to re-evaluate certain aspects of what occurred in the revolution. In this case, we have here a radical reform of the heart of the Roman rite, its most ancient and sacred part, that lasted only 14 years before the Novus Ordo, and traditionalists think this novelty is traditional! It is the height of absurdity.