SSPX adherents pose an obstacle to reconciliation

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 23, 2014

I am delighted that the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X are talking again. This means that hope for a reconciliation of the SSPX with the Church has not been abandoned. But in thinking about this today, I realized something quite significant. Because the SSPX is not territorial in nature, its very adherents constitute a growing obstacle to reunion with Rome.

What I mean by this is best explained by considering an alternative case. In Catholic history, the problem of schism has most often been territorial. For reasons that are largely socio-political, leaders in one region or another resent and reject the authority of a particular pope. They then advance an argument as to why a different pope is really the legitimate one (the typical case in the West, usually arising from dynastic squabbles) or why no pope is really necessary (the typical case in the East, arising from excessive deference to the Emperor in Constantinople).

There is a certain convenience to this sort of schism if it does not go on long enough to become deeply ingrained in the piety of those who are separated. If, at the highest levels of negotiation, a solution is reached, and the wayward parties can be persuaded that it is to their advantage to recognize and obey the lawful successor of St. Peter, then everybody else more or less goes along. Few at the lower levels have any vested interest in perpetuating the separation.

The Case of the SSPX

The Society of St. Pius X, however, is not territorial. In this sense it is far more like a heresy (as in some respects the hardening beliefs of the Society may well prove in time to be). This is so even though the form of the organization is based on a technical refusal (and a practical rejection) of the Pope’s authority to order episcopal jurisdiction in the Church. The ordination of bishops without papal approval and the establishment of a separate ecclesiastical governance are, of course, schismatic acts. They would rupture communion with the Church even if there were no difference in belief whatsoever.

But the SSPX is more like a heresy because in practice it prospers around the world by drawing to it those people in every region who have serious reservations about key Catholic doctrines as they have become more fully understood and developed in modern times, or serious reservations about disciplinary changes which they believe fundamentally alter the salvific efficacy of the Church. These reservations are used to justify what is referred to as the necessity defense for wholesale disobedience.

I will not dwell again here on the absurdity of the necessity defense as a justification for a refusal to accept papal authority over the jurisdiction of all bishops; this so-called defense is in essence a historical and theological myth. The important point here is that, like a heresy, the SSPX attracts—increasingly over time—those who are most disaffected from important elements of Catholic teaching (and of course liturgical discipline). Thus the ever more extreme and recalcitrant doctrinal and disciplinary attachments of the adherents of the SSPX cause the adherents themselves to be a major obstacle to reconciliation with the Church.

It is precisely for this reason that whenever efforts at reunion get to the stage of serious discussion, many voices are raised decrying the slightest compromise with Rome, and insisting on the essential purity of the Holy Way of the SSPX. As I mentioned, these are the earmarks of heresy rather than schism. As soon as this happens, the SSPX bishops, including Bishop Fellay, face the additional dilemma of assuring their volatile and extraordinarily touchy followers that they will never give up anything essential to the Society. Thus there is a marked cultural pressure from within to maintain separation. This pressure is quite different from the socio-political pressures that have most often been characteristic of schism in earlier periods.

Separatism

We see in the SSPX a schismatic body, possessing no alleged doctrinal difference with Rome concerning the fundamental constitution of the Catholic Church, which behaves exactly as if it is possessed by a classic heresy. In other words, it sees itself as the ultimate custodian of pure Christian doctrine, and refuses to operate in any sort of union with the universal Church, which it regards as having in these latter days fallen away from Christ.

I have often said that this is the way of Luther, of Calvin, of Zwingli, of John Knox, of Roger Williams, et al. This is, in fact, the essence of what in the history of Christianity we call separatism. And separatism is the face that launched a thousand sects.

To be even more precise, separatism has launched a thousand sects whose members all recoil, in the mad euphoria of private judgment, from the horrors of Rome. What is a little odd in the present case is the effort of the SSPX to retain some sort of hierarchical control, reminiscent of Anglicanism, despite presiding over a sort of grand doctrinal and disciplinary confusion. As time goes on, there will be less and less of substance to preside over, as the alleged content of faith splinters and warps to suit the predilections of those who wear a badge that can only read “every man his own pope.”

Please notice that it makes no difference that this reading is performed in the name of tradition. Every sect that has ever been formed has been self-deluded into thinking it alone preserves the true gospel from the previous age. In the absence of religious obedience to a contemporary Magisterium, there is no other argument that can be made without peering into the mirror and seeing a self-evident fool. It is always the same cry: Rome has erred! Rome is corrupt! We alone are called to preserve the Gospel of Christ!

Conclusion

Insofar as Rome can acknowledge some responsibility for a lack of doctrinal and liturgical discipline, she will naturally have one more reason to proceed as rapidly as possible with her own renewal while offering as many assurances as possible to the Society. We saw this especially in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. But ultimately the judgment of what must be corrected and how belongs to the Vicar of Christ, and not at all to any group of gnostic illuminati who fancy themselves to be repositories of the Divine spark. Catholicism is nothing if not an incarnate Faith—a faith of real live sinners—with all the bungling and messiness this must entail.

One is reminded of the famous saying of Hilaire Belloc—living very much in the age so prized by the SSPX—which runs as follows:

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine—but for unbelievers a proof its divinity might be found in the fact that no mere human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight. [quoted in Robert Speaight’s 1957 Life of Hilaire Belloc; New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy; p. 383]

This classic joke must be deeply understood by every adherent to the SSPX. It points to the necessary intuition that the one true Church cannot be improved by rebellion. The only legitimate radical option is holiness within the one Body. In contrast, the pressure for a form of distorted separatist purity—a pressure necessarily exerted by those attached to the peculiar passions of the Society of St. Pius X—presents a grave obstacle to successful negotiations with the Church of Christ.

Note: I am happy to add that, as of April of 2017, Pope Francis is taking rapid steps to regularize the canonical status of the SSPX. During the Jubilee of Mercy last year, the Pope gave canonical faculties to all SSPX priests for hearing confessions, and on April 4, 2017 the Pope gave SSPX priests faculties to witness marriages in the name of the Church, and directed all bishops to make provision for the same. Finally, Pope Francis’ plan (not yet complete) is to reincorporate the SSPX into the normal life of the Church by establishing the Society as a personal prelature.