Is this Pope Francis’ Nixon to China moment?
The Vatican has offered the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) a personal prelature and confirmed that certain documents from the Second Vatican Council are not doctrinal in nature, according to an Italian archbishop tasked with overseeing the canonically irregular group’s return to full Communion with Rome.
Archbishop Guido Pozzo, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, told a German newspaper that Pope Francis has offered the SSPX a return to full Communion via a personal prelature within the Church. A personal prelature is a hierarchically-structured group of Catholic faithful not bound by a geographic location — essentially, a diocese without a territory that complements the work of local dioceses “to which the faithful who form part of a personal prelature continue to belong.”
Opus Dei is the Catholic Church’s most well-known — and indeed, only — personal prelature.
Pozzo’s remarks, which Dr. Maike Hickson translated at OnePeterFive, indicate that the SSPX could be fully reunited with Rome despite the society’s rejection of certain Vatican II documents because the documents it rejects “are not about doctrines or definitive statements, but, rather, about instructions and orienting guides for pastoral practice.” The Second Vatican Council’s documents themselves indicate that only the Council’s teachings explicitly related to faith and morals are binding to Catholics, Pozzo explained.
“It was already clear at the time of the Council” that different Council documents carried different dogmatic weights, Pozzo said. “The General Secretary of the Council, Cardinal Pericle Felici, declared on November 16, 1964: ‘This holy synod defines only that as being binding for the Church what it declares explicitly to be such with regard to Faith and Morals.’ Only those texts assessed by the Council Fathers as being binding are to be accepted as such.”
Go here to read the rest. PopeWatch will believe it when it occurs. If the Pope heals this schism, it would be a solid accomplishment for his papacy.
I trust no Trojan horse from Jorge Bergoglio. If this were from Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, then my response would be different.
The SSPX knows the treatment given the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate
under this pontificate. If they were to accept this pope’s offer, what’s to stop
Rome from persecuting them in a similar fashion down the line? Let’s not kid
ourselves, this pontificate is top-heavy with men who have a low opinion of
tradition-loving Catholics. This pope, from his numerous public statements
calling such Catholics legalistic and fundamentalist pharisees, appears to
share that low opinion.
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As much as I’d love to see the SSPX resolve their situation viv-a-vis Rome, it
might be in their interest to drag things out until the next pontificate…
Don’t know enough about personal prelatures to know if it is a viable structure. Who would elect or appoint the head honcho of the SSPX under such a structure, what control would the Vatican have over it? How does this compare to an Ordinariate like the Anglican Ordinariate thing? I suppose, worse case scenario, if Francis snaps a trap, the SSPX could just go back to the current status quo (as long as they keep title to and control over all of their property/funds, reversion is always possible, and probably enough to keep the wolves at bay or getting FFIed).
First, the SSPX is NOT in schism. This has been the repeated point of Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos. The SSPX do not reject the ultimate authority of the Roman Pontiff, as the Eastern Orthodox do reject this authority. However, the SSPX has always held the point that no Pontiff, no Bishop, no Curia member has or ever had the authority to suppress the Tridentine Mass.
The SSPX is super-annoyed at three particular components of the Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae (religious freedom) (#1) and the Novus Ordo Mass (#1A – with its associated calendar). Nostra Aetete (and its insipid passage about Islam) is likely third. Even Bishop Fellay (I believe) said that he isn’t bothered by 95% of VII…..but these items are like the New River Gorge before the US19 bridge was built…and the current Pontiff is no engineer or ironworker.
The SSPX would have to change its position that the Novus Ordo Mass is invalid. Rome will not agree to the SSPX position on the Novus Ordo Mass. Almost all Western Catholics attend the Novus Ordo Mass and an unknown number of them have no use for Latin – Latin prayers, Latin hymns, Latin anything. Moreover, most priests have not learned sufficient Latin to celebrate even parts of the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin. Certain bishops have seen to this.
Per the SSPX (and to be fair, other trads) on religious freedom….certain of them, I know not how many, hold to the old notion that the only valid government is a Catholic monarch and the only valid state is a Catholic confessional state (hence the love for the Hapsburgs, who were backstabbers to Poland) because some Pope said so God knows how long ago.
So, there you have it. I think the SSPX is at least listening because they may soon need new bishops and in the West, bishop appointments are reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This was the reason for the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre in the first place.
SSPX should reject such overtures. Who can trust Pope Francis or his replacement? SSPX has already been approved by Pope Benedict XVI so what is to be gained by this. Pope Francis hates traditionalists and SSPX is the ultimate in that regard. SSPX being independent can now call out the misleading theology now prevalent in the Church. If they were formally part of the Church they would lose their independence. For the good of everyone, especially the Catholic Church, SSPX must remain independent. We need a voice crying in the desert of our irreligious world.
I do not believe that the SSPX does now or ever has held that the Novus Ordo Mass is invalid. Individual SSPX priests may have advised their parishioners to avoid the Novus Ordo because of the questionable circumstances of it’s construction and the conviction that it is intended to and will, in time, erode in the faithful the sense of the sacred but such admonitions are not tantamount to saying that it is invalid.
What is the difference between the requirements for full communion placed upon the SSPX during Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI pontificates and the current Pope Francis papacy?
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Canonical status for the SSPX should not result in [more] confusion for the faithful.
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As regards Vatican II/its documents, only one of these can representative of the Church’s position [the only position of interest to me and ought to be of interest to all]:
1) The requirements for full communion placed upon the SSPX during Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI pontificates.
2) The requirements for full communion placed upon the SSPX during the current Pope Francis papacy.
3) SSPX’s position.