MICHAEL SEAN WINTERS, with whom I sometimes strongly disagree about American politics but seldom on Catholic politics has an interesting and informative article about the so called "Society of Saint Pius X." Winters really knows his church history so it's some good background into how reactionary and fascistic that "trad-catholic" entity is, Jew hating and neo-medieval in all its dangerous absurdity.
Since I've been struck at how many non-Catholics seem to find this saga fascinating, I'm going to post a bit from his very informative piece.
None of this is unclear. There are no asterisks noting exceptions to the rule, no "sometimes" or "in certain cases" or "usually." The rejection of this teaching evidences the myopia of the group: They and they alone know the truth. Ironically, the Society of St. Pius X also evidences an acute case of cafeteria Catholicism.
These teachings of Vatican I only confirmed what had been long standing practice in the church: No bishop could be lawfully consecrated without an apostolic mandate from the pope. This was one of the principal issues upon which the Emperor Napoleon broke with Pope Pius VII, so it is not like Rome hasn't been to this Gallican party before. Still, the roots of the current schism lie not with the Bonapartists of French history, but with the Royalists, those who opposed everything in republican France and demanded a return to the status quo ante 1789.
These Royalists opposed the 1801 Concordat between the French empire and the Holy See. They rejected Pope Leo XIII's call for a "Ralliement" in the 1890s, that is, Leo's call to rally to the Third Republic and for French people to abandon devotion to monarchy. And, in the 1920s, the Royalists resisted Pope Pius XI's condemnation of the Action Française, a proto-fascist group urging the restoration of the monarchy. This is the ideological lineage of the Society of St. Pius X.
A key part of each rejection was the tolerance of Jews by the French Republic. Antisemitism has been one of the defining characteristics of the Society of St. Pius X since its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre rejected the Second Vatican Council's historic decree condemning antisemitism, Nostra Aetate.
Lefebvre and his followers also rejected Vatican II's decree on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae. Although the church understands the source of religious freedom differently from the way liberalism does, the Society of St. Pius X rejects both understandings. They are the first post-liberals, unwilling or unable to see that respect for the conscience rights of all is the mark of a humane, decent culture and, importantly, a precursor of genuine evangelization.
More than the old rite is at stake. It appears the Vatican has finally lost patience with these antisemitic, post-liberal, cafeteria and now former Catholics. The decree from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was called an "explanatory note," but it should be given a formal title: Ave atque Vale. Hail and Farewell.
That last one is exactly in line with my own view of it. The Vatican, bishops, cardinals, popes, have been a lot more lenient with them than they have other groups. Benedict XVI positively bent backwards to try to lure them back when he overturned the excommunication that that arch-conservative, JPII had issued against them, only to have the Holocaust denial of a couple of their, then, illicit bishops become a public issue. Leo is clearly trying to convince some of the trad-cath laity that has been associated with the "SSPX" back by being more lenient with the Latin mass cult than Francis was, we will see to what extent that works. Maybe it will with some of them. But I have to wonder if their motives wasn't that they liked the Latin.*
Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan has a piece that contrasts the treatment of the "SSPX" to the Roman Catholic Women Priests movement by the vatican, during reactionary or "liberal" papacies.
Instead, the Vatican has responded almost exclusively through canonical sanctions. Women who attempt to receive ordination, together with those who attempt to ordain them, incur automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See under Canon 1379 §3.³ Unlike the Vatican’s decades-long engagement with the SSPX, no comparable process of theological dialogue, canonical negotiation, or pastoral reconciliation has been extended to RCWP.
This contrast raises an important ecclesiological question. Why has the institutional Church devoted decades to dialogue with a movement that rejects significant teachings of the Second Vatican Council while declining even a single official dialogue with women who seek to serve the Church through ordained ministry? RCWP does not seek separation from the Catholic Church. Rather, it seeks recognition that the Holy Spirit continues to call women to priestly ministry and that the gifts of women belong at the heart of the Church’s sacramental life.
These points are very good ones. I know which of the two is in the line of Vatican II and which one isn't, which one is based on the Gospel of Jesus and which is based on late medieval and 19th century neo-medieval garbage. And so must Pope Leo. I don't know how long JPII's definitive though in no way "infallible" declaration that the question of Women's ordination was closed will be allowed to stop his successors from admitting that the question is in now way closed, that kind of reversal in the Church can take centuries or it can take one conclave. But as the ever decreasing numbers of supposedly celebate male priests dwindles - and that rate is increasing steadily - the Catholic Church is going to have to do something or it will find that, as happened in my town, with a church closing they lose a lot more People than they gain in the paltry increase of conversions that they're always touting. That has not come close to the rate of conversions at the time of Vatican II. They keep telling the faithful to pray to the Holy Spirit for vocations while ignoring the Women who say they are being called by the Holy Spirit and Men who either want to be ordained or those who are ordained finding that they are also called to be married. That can't keep up. Apparently the Holy Spirit has been answering all along and the answer to what the Vatican wants is "You can't have what you want but you can have what you don't like." In short, "Don't be a bunch of selfish pricks."
* I'm unclear if, in their use of the 1962 liturgy, if they will want to overturn such reforms of previous conservatives. Pius XII was the one who said they could have a deacon read the Gospel in the vernacular as the priest whispered it in Latin. Or, indeed, the extensive reforms to the liturgy that their hero and namesake, Pius X, that definitive anti-modernist, made to the liturgy that PXII AND GOOD POPE JOHN XXIII built on. The "trad-caths" who ask me things like what was wrong with worshiping like St. Francis did have no idea of the real and complex history of the Catholic liturgy which changed over and over and over again. Most of them have no idea that using Latin was, itself, a reform in the early centuries because all of the earliest liturgy in Rome was in Greek. It is one of the ironies that the author of the most popular of the several veey long used Eucharistic Prayers was by the Greek speaking Anti-Pope, St. Hyppolytus, who holds the distinction of being the only anti-pope who is also considered a saint. It is certain that he originally wrote it in Greek, not Latin.
The first schism in Rome occurred early in the third century, after Pope Callistus I translated the liturgy from Greek into vulgar Latin — the informal, popular version of the language at the time — so that the common people could better understand the celebration of the Eucharist. Hippolytus, the first antipope and author of Eucharistic Prayer II, led a revolt to keep the Greek liturgy. The dispute became so bitter and violent that pagan soldiers arrested both men and sent them to the tin mines of Sardinia.
I've had to tell a number of devotees of the Latin Mass that the Kyrie is not in Latin but in Greek, a hold over from the earliest liturgy of the Western church.
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