re sspx schism larry l overacker writes responding to simon i may be interesting to see some brief selections posted to the net my understanding is that sspx does not consider itself in schism or legitimately excommunicated but that s really beside the point what does the roman catholic church say excommunication can be real apart from formal excommunication as provided for in canon law here s some of the theology involved for the interested there is confusion over this issue of the sspx s schism often the basic problem is lack of an ability to distinguish between true obedience false obedience disobedience schism take the various classifications of obedience first there are important elements involved here for my purposes a command the response made to the command as far as the command goes commands can be legitimate such as the pope ordering catholics to not eat meat on fridays or they can be illegitimate such as the pope ordering catholics to worship the god dagon when every other full moon comes around as far as the response to a command goes it can be to refuse to do what is commanded or to comply making a table there are thus possibilites command response name legitimate comply true obedience illegitimate refuse true obedience legitimate refuse disobedience illegitimate comply false obedience so now you see where my classifications of obedience come from obedience is not solely a matter of compliance refusal the nature of the commands must also be taken into account it is not enough to consider someone s compliance or refusal and then say whether they are obedient or disobedient you also have to take into consideration whether the commands are good or bad in my example if the pope commands all catholics to worship the god dagon and they all refuse they aren t being disobedient at all as far as the society of saint pius x goes they are certainly refusing to comply with certain things the pope desires but that alone is insufficient to allow one to label them disobedient you also have to consider the nature of the papal desires and there s the rub sspx says the popes since vatican ii have been commanding certain very bad things for the church the popes have of course disagreed so where are we are we in another arian heresy complete with weak popes or are the sspx priests modern martin luthers well the only way to answer that is to examine who is saying what and what the traditional teaching of the church is the problem here is that very few catholics have much of an idea of what is really going on and what the issues are the religion of american catholics is especially defective in intellectual depth you will never read about the issues being discussed in the catholic press in this country on the other hand one italian catholic magazine i get days has had interviews with the superior general of the society of saint pius x many catholics will decide to side with the pope there is some soundness in this because the papacy is infallible so eventually some pope will straighten all this out but on the other hand there is also unsoundness in this in that in the short term the popes may indeed be wrong and such catholics are doing nothing to help the situation by obeying them where they re wrong in fact if the situation is grave enough they sin in obeying him at the very least they re wasting a great opportunity because they are failing to love christ in a heroic way at the very time that he needs this badly schism let s move on to schism what is it schism is a superset of disobedience refusal to obey a legitimate command all schismatics are disobedient but it s a superset so it doesn t work the other way around not all disobeyers are schismatics the mere fact that the sspx priests don t comply with the holy father s desires doesn t make them schismatics so what is it that must be added to disobedience to constitute a schism maybe this something else makes the sspx priests schismatics you must add this the rejection of the right to command look in any decent reference on catholic theology and that s what you ll find the distinguishing criterion of schism is rejection of the right to command here s what the catholic encyclopedia says for example not every disobedience is a schism in order to possess this character it must include besides the trangression of the commands of superiors denial of their divine right to command from the ce article schism is the society of saint pius x then schismatic the answer is a clear no they say that the pope is their boss they pray for him every day and that s all that matters as far as schism goes what all this boils down to is this if we leave aside the consideration of the exact nature of their objections their position is a legitimate one as far as the catholic theology of obedience and schism goes they are resisting certain papal policies because they think that they are clearly contrary to the traditional teaching of the papacy and the best interests of the church in fact someone who finds himself in this situation has a duty to resist now what is the stance of rome on all this well if you read the holy father s motu proprio ecclesia dei you can find out it s the definitive document on the subject a motu proprio is a specifically papal act it s not the product of a roman congregation a letter that the pope has possibly never even read it s from the pope himself his boss is god there s no one else to complain to in this document the holy father says among other things the episcopal consecrations performed by archbishop lefebvre constituted a schismatic act archbishop lefebvre s problem was a misunderstanding of the nature of tradtion both are confusing i fail to see the logic of the pope s points as far as the episcopal consecrations go i read an interesting article in a translation of the italian magazine si si no no it all gets back to the question of jurisdiction if episcopal consecrations imply rejection of the pope s jurisdiction then they would truly constitute a schismatic act justifying excommunication under the current code of canon law but my problem with this is this according to the traditional theology of holy orders episcopal consecration does not confer jurisdiction it only confers the power of order the ability to confect the sacraments jurisdiction must be conferred by someone else with the power to confer it such as the pope the society bishops knowing the traditional theology quite well take great pains to avoid any pretence of jurisdiction over anyone they simply confer those sacraments that require a bishop the si si no no article was interesting in that it posited that the reason that the pope said what he did is that he has a novel post vatican ii idea of holy orders according to this idea episcopal consecration does confer jurisdiction i lent the article to a friend unfortunately so can t tell you more i believe they quoted the new code of canon law in support of this idea the pope s thinking on this point remains a great puzzle to me there s no way there is a schism according to traditional catholic theology so why does the pope think this as far as the points regarding the nature of tradition goes here s the passage in question the root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of tradtion incomplete because it does not take sufficiently into the account the living character of tradition which as the second vatican council clearly taught comes from the apostles and progresses in the church with the help of the holy spirit there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on this comes about in various ways it comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts it comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience and it comes from the preaching of those who have received along with their right of succession in the espiscopate the sure charism of truth but especially contradictory is a notion of tradition which opposes the universal magisterium of the church possessed by the bishop of rome and the body of bishops it is impossible to remain faithful to the tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom in the person of the apostle peter christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his church papal motu proprio ecclesia dei july it seems to me that the holy father is making two points here that can be simplified to the following vatican council ii has happened i am the pope the argument being that either case is sufficient to prove that archbishop lefebvre must be wrong because he disagrees with them this is weak to say the least it would have helped clarify things more if the pope had addressed archbishop lefebvre s concerns in detail what is john paul ii s stand on the social kingship of christ as taught by gregory xvi pius ix leo xiii pius xi and pius xii for example are we supposed to ignore what all these popes said on the subject i don t know what the future will hold but the powers that be in the sspx are still talking with rome and trying to straighten things out many people would prefer to call a justified refusal to obey justified disobedience or even obeying god rather than man calling a refusal to obey obedience puts us into a sort of alice in wonderland world where words mean whatever we want them to mean similarly schism indicates a formal break in the church if the pope says that a schism exists it seems to me that by definition it exists it may be that the pope is on the wrong side of the break that there is no good reason for the break to exist and that it will shortly be healed but how can one deny that it does in fact exist it seems to me that you are in grave danger of destroying the thing you are trying to reform the power of the papacy what good will it do you if you become reconciled to the the pope in the future but in the process you have destroyed his ability to use the tools of church discipline it s one thing to hold that the pope has misused his powers and excommunicated someone wrongly it s something else to say that his excommunication did not take effect and the schism is all in his imagination that means that acts of church discipline are not legal tools but acts whose validity is open to debate generally it has been liberal catholics who have had problems with the pope while they have often objected to church sanctions generally they have admitted that the sanctions exist you are now opening the door to people simply ignoring papal decisions claiming to be truly obeying by disobeying and to be in communion while excommunicated this would seem to be precisely the denial of divine right to command that you say defines schism clh
