Oriens writer Gerard McManus sums up a debate that has broken out in recent months among traditional Catholics over the status of the Society of St Pius X.

A recent debate between two leading protagonists of traditional Catholics has focused attention on one of the crucial issues facing the Vatican in its effort to heal the sole schism in the reign of John Paul II, namely the canonical status of the Society of Saint Pius X.

The exact standing of the SSPX and its members is critical, not only to curial canon law experts grappling with a way to accommodate the group within the larger Church, but in a pastoral sense for thousands of ordinary traditional Catholics who are caught in the middle and who are bewildered by the Church's treatment of the SSPX.

On one side of the debate is Christopher A. Ferrara, lawyer, author and President of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, who takes an accommodating position on the status of SSPX priests and laity, backing up his case with a number of Vatican documents which add up to what can only be described as a confused and indefinite official position.

On the other side of the debate is Fr Arnauld Devillers, Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, who adopts a much harder line maintaining the view that SSPX priests are non- Catholic ministers.

What is most striking about the fierceness of the debate is that it is happening in the midst of the first serious and prolonged attempt at reconciliation by Rome and the SSPX since the split occurred in July 1988.

It needs to be remembered that the Fraternity of St Peter had its origins in the SSPX itself, and was established after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, with the assistance of Brazilian Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, consecrated four Society priests as bishops in Econe , Switzerland , without a papal mandate.

Trigger

The trigger for the debate, which subsequently flowed over into the pages of The Latin Mass magazine, was an article by Fr Hughes de Montjoye in the Fraternity's French language journal. Fr de Montjoye claimed that SSPX priests were non-Catholic ministers who commit sacrilege to the sacrament of the Eucharist in consecrating outside of communion with the Church.

According to the article, Catholics may passively assist at an SSPX Mass for a grave reason (say a funeral), but are not permitted to communicate because the writer claims it is non-Catholic worship (sic).

These claims seem to be at odds, at least in spirit, with the fact that Canon Law permits Catholics to receive confession, communion and extreme unction from Orthodox and other non- Catholic clerics with valid holy orders in times of necessity with the proviso that "the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided".

That Lefebvre and the four new bishops were declared automatically excommunicated along with de Castro Mayer after the illicit Episcopal consecrations went ahead is not in dispute. But, Ferrara argues, the apparent ‘fact’ of excommunication is less clear and more uncertain the more one examines the case. And even if it were clear, the Church is not always constrained by the letter of its own law when a judgment is made that justice, charity, or reconciliation might be better served by another course.

Examples of this include the fact that the Vatican has ceased to apply the term "schismatic" to the Orthodox or even to the 100 illicitly consecrated Chinese bishops of the Communist-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association.

More specifically, Ferraro argues, the Church has never given a clear determination of the status of the SSPX priests and lay people who attend their Masses and confessionals. "While the motu proprio, which penalises the SSPX bishops, speaks of ‘formal adherence to the schism’ as grounds for incurring the same penalties as the excommunicated bishops, the term ‘ formal adherence’ has never been defined in a universally binding pronouncement by a competent Vatican dicastery.”

Rome tentative

Put simply, according to Ferraro, not even the Vatican officials who have had care of the SSPX affair (Ecclesia Dei Commission or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) have treated it as a case of true and proper schism. He says, accordingly, that the status of the SSPX priests and laity is in the realm of a canonical grey area involving Catholics in an irregular situation.

Not so, says Fr Devillers, who argues that the matter has been crystal clear since the time of the Lefebvre consecrations on June 30, 1988.

"To be in full communion with the successor of Peter, one must be received into communion by him: a refusal entails the absence of communion," Fr Deviller wrote in reply. Lefebvre knowingly went against the warnings and pleas from the Pope not to consecrate the bishops and was excommunicated on two grounds – for schism and for carrying out episcopal consecrations without papal mandate.

Fr Devillers rejects the argument that there is no clear definition of what is meant by “formal adherence” of priests and lay people to the excommunicated bishops, citing guidelines written by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts in 1996 to answer a bishop's specific inquiry about the status of the SSPX bishops, priests and lay adherents.

The pontifical council's line was that there "seemed no doubt" that Lefebvrist priests and deacons were indeed guilty of formal adherence, but not the laity.

Ferrara quotes the opinions of various Cardinals and Roman officials on the SSPX situation including Cardinals Castillo Lara, Joseph Ratzinger, Ecclesia Dei president Castrillon Hoyos and secretary Monsignor Perl, and the former President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, Edward Cassidy.

Internal matter

Cassidy, who has apparently managed to paper over almost 500 years of substantial doctrinal incompatibility between Catholics and Lutherans, is quoted as saying the SSPX situation is an "internal matter of the Catholic Church".

"The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community within the meaning used in the Directory (on Ecumenism)", Cassidy said in 1994.

As for Perl, he declared in September 1999, in response to an enquiry from the United States of America, that the priests of the Society of Pius X are validly ordained but "suspended": i.e. prohibited from exercising their priestly functions because they are not properly incardinated in a diocese or religious institute in full communion with the Holy See.

Perl letter

"They are also excommunicated if they adhere to the schism," Perl wrote, while admitting that the Holy See had not defined exactly in what this adherence consists. Significantly Perl also noted that the situation of the SSPX faithful is more complicated and that their situation can be described best as "irregular". If they attend Mass primarily because of an attraction to the old rite, Perl wrote, they are not in schism, but if they stay too long there is a danger they may "imbibe" the schismatic mentality of the Society.

Ferraro argues that if the priests are merely suspended - and therefore still subject to Church disciplinary law - it follows that they cannot possibly be true schismatics because non-Catholics are not subject to Church law.

Perl's verdict for the faithful is that while they are not encouraged to attend SSPX chapels, they are neither forbidden to attend, nor subject to any penalty for doing so, if their attendance is on account of the reverence and devotion people find there.

However, Ferrara does admit that a later missive from the Ecclesia Dei official creates added confusion when he claimed that it is actually sinful to receive Communion at any SSPX chapel, to assist at an SSPX chapel without a "grave reason", and to attend an SSPX chapel to fulfil a Sunday obligation.

Castrillon Hoyos' recent olive branch correspondence with the SSPX bishops is also used by Ferrara as evidence that the Society is not in schism.

The Cardinal described the SSPX situation as "irregular" and concedes that, in his meeting with the bishops, "there was not disclosed an inkling of heresy nor any will to incur a formal schism".

The living reality of the SSPX affair, concludes Ferrara , is that of an internal wound in the visible commonwealth of the Church caused by the unprecedented postconciliar upheavals.

Fr Devillers describes the quoting of the above Cardinals and officials by Ferrara as selective and disingenuous.

Cassidy, for example argues Devillers, is not saying there is no schism, but simply that the SSPX problem is not under his bailiwick (the Ecclesia Dei being the competent commission). On the other hand Devillers ignores Cassidy's more central point that the SSPX is an internal Church matter.

Just Politeness?

Castrillon Hoyos' words, Devillers believes are to be understood as charitable politeness employed to promote goodwill in negotiations.

Fr Devillers finally quotes another priest, American canon lawyer Fr Gerald Murray who did his doctoral thesis on the canonical status of the SSPX.

"The Society of Pius X and those who frequent their chapels must realise that continuing on a path of defiance and separation from the Holy See, and from the Church in general, will inevitably lead them further and further away from Catholic unity and into undeniable schism," Murray wrote in 1996.

Given that SSPX is guilty of no evident heresy, and holds the Pope to be the legitimate head of the Church, Ferrara and others have questioned the right of the Fraternity of St Peter to condemn the SSPX to a canonical position more grave than that of the Orthodox and other groupings. This move seems particularly rash when delicate negotiations are underway to bring the SSPX in from out of the cold.

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