![]() In the meantime, Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio document Summorum pontificum inadvertently confused the issue in the minds of many Catholics even further. A distinction has to be made between the Pope’s concern for the spiritual wellbeing of the four men who had been under excommunication, and who had respectfully petitioned the Pope to return to full communion with the Church and the canonical status of the entire SSPX, which still has never been recognized by Rome. But this did not automatically bring with it a reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the whole institute of the SSPX, which remains a separate issue. As was noted in the abovementioned column, this excommunication applied only to these individual men, and not to the SSPX as a whole.Įleven years later, as was already discussed in “ Canon Law and the SSPX,” Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of the four bishops. Things changed dramatically in 1988, however, when Lefebvre consecrated four new bishops without papal mandate, an act which caused the four men and Lefebvre himself to be declared excommunicated by John Paul II. Nevertheless, for many years the SSPX grew (and in many areas of the world, it positively thrived) on a sort of parallel track with the Catholic Church, without being directly and formally condemned by Rome. Sadly, however, this is not the case! While Pope Benedict was clearly hoping to reconcile the SSPX to the Church during his papacy, the fact is that this important item on his to-do list was left unfinished when he resigned in February.Īs we saw in “ Are They Excommunicated? Sanctions, Part III,” the status of the SSPX from its very inception was canonically questionable, as its founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, had established it in 1970 without the following the procedures and obtaining the approbations that were required at the time. The SSPX continues to have a canonically irregular status.Q: What’s the canonical status of priests ordained by SSPX bishops, and what’s the canonical status of the sacraments they administer? –JohnĪ: It would have been marvelous to be able to respond to John that the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) were now fully united to Rome, and thus had a status comparable to the members of any other religious institute in the Church. Lefebvre, who based the SSPX in Écône, Switzerland, was excommunicated along with the four bishops.īenedict lifted the excommunication of the four illegitimately consecrated bishops in 2009, years after Lefebvre’s death, as part of his attempt to bring the Society back into full unity with the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II wrote the apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei in 1988, after Lefebvre ordained four bishops without the permission of the Holy See. The Mass said using the 1962 Missal is known variously as the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, the Tridentine Mass, and the Traditional Latin Mass. Traditionis custodes made significant changes to Summorum Pontificum, a 2007 apostolic letter acknowledging the right of all priests to say Mass using the Roman Missal of 1962. In a letter to the world’s bishops explaining his decision, the pope said he felt compelled to act because the use of the 1962 Missal was “often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’” Issued with immediate effect on July 16, Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis custodes (“Guardians of the tradition”) underlined that it is each bishop’s “exclusive competence” to authorize the use of the Traditional Latin Mass in his diocese. And so, let us go back to what the Council required of the Church,” the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said. “It’s clear that Traditionis custodes is saying: OK, this experiment has not entirely been successful. ![]() Pope John Paul II’s Ecclesia Dei and Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum “were established in order to encourage the Lefebvrists, above all, to return to unity with the Church,” Roche continued, referring to the SSPX by the name of its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. 14, Archbishop Arthur Roche said that “the normal form of the celebration of the Roman Rite is found in those documents that have been published since the Second Vatican Council.” In an interview with a television channel serving Italian-speaking Switzerland, aired Nov. Pius X (SSPX) “has not entirely been successful” and it is necessary to “go back” to what Vatican II required of the Church. The Vatican’s liturgy chief said this week that Pope Francis issued Traditionis custodes as the effort to reconcile the Society of St.
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