What should the SSPX do?

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FullyMT

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Yes, I know that most of you will say that they should submit and accept all Vatican II teachings. Still, should they do this even if their conscience tells them that the Vatican II teachings on Ecumenism and Religious Liberty contradict pre-Vatican II Magisterium teaching?
They should follow their conscience but realize they can't call themselves Catholic.
 
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QuantaCura

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They should accept it with the obsequium religiosum (religious submission) that is due to that decree and declaration. This assent is not the same as divine faith or ecclesiastical faith and is, in a sense, conditional, since such pronouncments are not strictly infallible. This assent requires a spirit of docility towards the teaching and presumption of truth and a good faith effort to assimilate the pronouncment, and, if this fails, then one may express one's criticisms to the teaching authority in a manner consonant with one's rank and expertise--always reserving the final judgment to the Apostolic See.

When the Institute of the Good Shephard was erected (it consisted of ex-SSPX members), it was expressly and explicitly granted permission to engage in serious criticism of Vatican II, but also affirmed it is ultimately the right of the Apostolic See to provide the final, definitive interpretion. In other words, both aspects of the proper religious submission were affirmed.

Why can't the SSPX do this?

The SSPX could do just that, but it seems they won't. They seem to refuse to accept the approbation of the Holy See unless the Holy See admits to errors being taught by the Council and also consistently by the Popes after the Council. They promote a strange idea that denies the permanent continuity of subject of the Magisterium in the Pope and bishops united to him and that it properly belongs to that permanently existing Magisterium to interpret both Scripture and Tradition in the present.

For example, Fr. Gleize, the SSPX professor of theology at Econe and participant in the doctrinal discussions with the Holy See, is a major proponent of this idea, which he is no doubt spreading to his students an advising the higher ups. Since he has definitively judged Vatican II to have taught error, he believes it cannot be considered "magisterium" at all. As such, he completely rejected the idea of obsequium religiousum towards the Council claiming it required no assent whatsoever in total (he explicitly rejected this idea in his response to the explanation of this kind of submission by Msgr. Ocariz of the CDF, another participant in the discussions). This is why a lot of SSPX rhetoric draws distinctions between the current Roman Church and "eternal Rome" as if they are not the same perduring subject.

This, to me, seems to be the major stumbling block with the SSPX that was not present with other groups which have reconciled and have been able to legitimately express reservations about certain decisions of the Council.
 
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Rhamiel

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Yes, I know that most of you will say that they should submit and accept all Vatican II teachings. Still, should they do this even if their conscience tells them that the Vatican II teachings on Ecumenism and Religious Liberty contradict pre-Vatican II Magisterium teaching?
to be honest
those two things kind of confuse me as well
 
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Chrystal-J

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They should accept it with the obsequium religiosum (religious submission) that is due to that decree and declaration. This assent is not the same as divine faith or ecclesiastical faith and is, in a sense, conditional, since such pronouncments are not strictly infallible. This assent requires a spirit of docility towards the teaching and presumption of truth and a good faith effort to assimilate the pronouncment, and, if this fails, then one may express one's criticisms to the teaching authority in a manner consonant with one's rank and expertise--always reserving the final judgment to the Apostolic See.

When the Institute of the Good Shephard was erected (it consisted of ex-SSPX members), it was expressly and explicitly granted permission to engage in serious criticism of Vatican II, but also affirmed it is ultimately the right of the Apostolic See to provide the final, definitive interpretion. In other words, both aspects of the proper religious submission were affirmed.

Why can't the SSPX do this?

The SSPX could do just that, but it seems they won't. They seem to refuse to accept the approbation of the Holy See unless the Holy See admits to errors being taught by the Council and also consistently by the Popes after the Council. They promote a strange idea that denies the permanent continuity of subject of the Magisterium in the Pope and bishops united to him and that it properly belongs to that permanently existing Magisterium to interpret both Scripture and Tradition in the present.

For example, Fr. Gleize, the SSPX professor of theology at Econe and participant in the doctrinal discussions with the Holy See, is a major proponent of this idea, which he is no doubt spreading to his students an advising the higher ups. Since he has definitively judged Vatican II to have taught error, he believes it cannot be considered "magisterium" at all. As such, he completely rejected the idea of obsequium religiousum towards the Council claiming it required no assent whatsoever in total (he explicitly rejected this idea in his response to the explanation of this kind of submission by Msgr. Ocariz of the CDF, another participant in the discussions). This is why a lot of SSPX rhetoric draws distinctions between the current Roman Church and "eternal Rome" as if they are not the same perduring subject.

This, to me, seems to be the major stumbling block with the SSPX that was not present with other groups which have reconciled and have been able to legitimately express reservations about certain decisions of the Council.

Thanks for explaining that. It sounds like a lack of submission, which ironically, the nuns of the LCWR are having a problem with. These two groups are at each end of the spectrum, but having the same troubles.
 
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Basil the Great

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I have mixed feelings about the SSPX. I can understand their concerns about Vatican II teachings. However, said teachings still came from an Ecumenical Council. Hence, I believe that ultimately their position is a weak one. It would seem that those who deny the validity of VII teachings would have a more consistent theological stance if they adopted the view of those few Ultra-Traditionalists who believe that the see of Peter has been vacant starting with Pope John 23rd. I do not understand the SSPX logic which contends that Vatican II was not a Dogmatic Council, but only a Pastoral Council, and thus it's teachings are not protected by infallibility.
 
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M

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I like the distinction made by then Cardinal Ratzinger that conscience is not an independent road to the truth but a co-knowing with the truth. Conscience is not its own master but rather is a servant of the truth, helping us apply it and follow it. So in this case I don't think they should listen to conscience, which at the moment is not properly conformed to the truth. They should submit to the magisterium.
 
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Rhamiel

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Anything in particular about either?
well before Vatican II the teaching of the Church on "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" was a lot more easy to understand
I do understand the more nuanced teaching but it is kind of tricky and has caused a lot of Catholics to be very blase about evangelical works.
people no longer seem to think that heresy is a sin
 
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Become EO?:p

I sometimes wonder why they haven't lol. They don't even accept the hierarchy they believe was divinely established. Awkward situation, but if you wanted something that claims to be untouched by modernism Eastern Orthodoxy certainly makes that claim.

Also, I agree with Rahmiel. I wonder about Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus too, and it does seem like everything was simpler and easier to understand before Vatican 2. Heretical Christianity and Apostate religions are seen as no big deal, you'll probably get to heaven anyway especially if you never hear anything about the Catholic Church.

I think people are misinterpreting what Vatican 2 is saying about EENS and taking it to an extreme of no evangelism and no hurting other people's feelings to try to lead them to Catholicism, but I'm still not sure I understand. Maybe QuantaCura (no pressure :p) can help us understand.
 
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MKJ

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I sometimes wonder why they haven't lol. They don't even accept the hierarchy they believe was divinely established. Awkward situation, but if you wanted something that claims to be untouched by modernism Eastern Orthodoxy certainly makes that claim.

Also, I agree with Rahmiel. I wonder about Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus too, and it does seem like everything was simpler and easier to understand before Vatican 2. Heretical Christianity and Apostate religions are seen as no big deal, you'll probably get to heaven anyway especially if you never hear anything about the Catholic Church.

I think people are misinterpreting what Vatican 2 is saying about EENS and taking it to an extreme of no evangelism and no hurting other people's feelings to try to lead them to Catholicism, but I'm still not sure I understand. Maybe QuantaCura (no pressure :p) can help us understand.


I think part of it is really having examined the fruit of the earlier way of looking at things, well, it wasn't really very nice. Forced conversions, seeing all non-Christians as essentially Satanic, isn't really all that wonderful. Look at some of the terrible things you see about Muslims or neopagans on Christian websites which take a very conservative attitude to those who don't clearly accept Jesus. People seem all to ready to treat people as "other" even to the point of denying their humanity. So I think part of reason for the change in language is simply because people seemed to be failing to grasp the way it was explained before.

Mind you, I don't think the Catholic Church is nearly so ecumenical as to say "oh, everyone will probably get to Heaven no matter what". Some people will say that, but I have never got that impression from any of the better quality theologians or teachers.

As far as the SSPX - I think it is pretty simply as far as their priests go. Most of them do not want to submit to authority, and a number of them seem to be rather hateful. While the EO, or even some Anglican or Old Catholic groups would seem to be a logical fit, they would still be under authority.
 
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FullyMT

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I sometimes wonder why they haven't lol. They don't even accept the hierarchy they believe was divinely established. Awkward situation, but if you wanted something that claims to be untouched by modernism Eastern Orthodoxy certainly makes that claim.

Also, I agree with Rahmiel. I wonder about Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus too, and it does seem like everything was simpler and easier to understand before Vatican 2. Heretical Christianity and Apostate religions are seen as no big deal, you'll probably get to heaven anyway especially if you never hear anything about the Catholic Church.

I think people are misinterpreting what Vatican 2 is saying about EENS and taking it to an extreme of no evangelism and no hurting other people's feelings to try to lead them to Catholicism, but I'm still not sure I understand. Maybe QuantaCura (no pressure :p) can help us understand.
To assuage your fears:
Vatican II explicitly rejects false irenicism.
Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes (and other writings from the Council) both explicitly call for the evangelization of the world.
 
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I think you beat me to the punch! LOL....There is so much absurdity in SSPX. If you believe in the pope as an infallible patriarch sitting in the Chair of Peter who practices a universally supreme jurisdiction over the entire Church, you cannot go into this traditionalist schism and claim you're Catholic. It's ridiculous. Either you accept papal infallibility or you don't. If you do, you'll follow the Pope. And the popes are in favor of Vatican II and uphold it......

If they don't like it, they need to leave....Orthodoxy is the most logical destination. But to be Orthodox, they'd have to jettison some of their mindsets and approaches to salvation and ecclesiology.

Become EO?:p
 
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Very true. Orthodoxy is most definitely about humbling oneself to authority. Respect for one's bishop and especially patriarch is paramount. Orthodoxy isn't easy and submission is a must. Orthodoxy also LOATHES change, thankfully. I agree that SSPXers are a grumpy, contrarian bunch. The ones I've met were a judgmental bunch of pharisees and didn't seem to really appreciate the depths of worship, just external requirements and legalist praxis. Orthodoxy is about ritual, but a deep internalization and ridding oneself of legalism is key.

I think part of it is really having examined the fruit of the earlier way of looking at things, well, it wasn't really very nice. Forced conversions, seeing all non-Christians as essentially Satanic, isn't really all that wonderful. Look at some of the terrible things you see about Muslims or neopagans on Christian websites which take a very conservative attitude to those who don't clearly accept Jesus. People seem all to ready to treat people as "other" even to the point of denying their humanity. So I think part of reason for the change in language is simply because people seemed to be failing to grasp the way it was explained before.

Mind you, I don't think the Catholic Church is nearly so ecumenical as to say "oh, everyone will probably get to Heaven no matter what". Some people will say that, but I have never got that impression from any of the better quality theologians or teachers.

As far as the SSPX - I think it is pretty simply as far as their priests go. Most of them do not want to submit to authority, and a number of them seem to be rather hateful. While the EO, or even some Anglican or Old Catholic groups would seem to be a logical fit, they would still be under authority.
 
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QuantaCura

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well before Vatican II the teaching of the Church on "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" was a lot more easy to understand
I do understand the more nuanced teaching but it is kind of tricky and has caused a lot of Catholics to be very blase about evangelical works.
people no longer seem to think that heresy is a sin

The thing is, the "more nuanced" view was taught consistently before the Council as well--it was really nothing new. While the underlying idea that it was possible for even non-Catholics to be saved given certain circumstances goes all the way back to the Fathers, it was first really explained in detail around the 16th century. Both large swaths of people being led away into Protestantism and the discovery in the new world of huge populations of people where the Gospel was never promulgated led to this development. This is when St. Robert Bellarmine developed the terminology of belonging to the Church "in voto," as compared to being an actual member, for example.

From then, all the old theological manuals and catechisms right up to Vatican II affirm the same thing.

Likewise, the idea that people born into heresies are themselves not to be presumed guilty of heresy is also not new. It is found in the writings of Cardinal Manning concerning Anglicans (Manning is historically contrasted to his contemporary Cardinal Newman as being much more conservative than Newman on such matters).

This idea itself goes back at least to St. Augustine, who noted:

But though the doctrine which men hold be false and perverse, if they do not maintain it with passionate obstinacy, especially when they have not devised it by the rashness of their own presumption, but have accepted it from parents who had been misguided and had fallen into error, and if they are with anxiety seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found it, such men are not to be counted heretics.
CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 43 (St. Augustine)

St. Augustine also taught the idea of partial communion:

For now he is a recognized member of their own body, in company with those very men whom he baptized while he was separated from them in the schism of Maximianus. And so others could receive from them, whilst they still had not joined our society, what they themselves had not lost by severance from our society. And hence it is clear that they are guilty of impiety who endeavor to rebaptize those who are in Catholic unity; and we act rightly who do not dare to repudiate God's sacraments, even when administered in schism. For in all points in which they think with us, they also are in communion with us, and only are severed from us in those points in which they dissent from us. For contact and disunion are not to be measured by different laws in the case of material or spiritual affinities. For as union of bodies arises from continuity of position, so in the agreement of wills there is a kind of contact between souls. If, therefore, a man who has severed himself from unity wishes to do anything different from that which had been impressed on him while in the state of unity, in this point he does sever himself, and is no longer a part of the united whole; but wherever he desires to conduct himself as is customary in the state of unity, in which he himself learned and received the lessons which he seeks to follow, in these points he remains a member, and is united to the corporate whole.
In the Treatise which we Wrote against the Published Epistle of Parmenianus To...

These ideas didn't get rid of evangelical zeal or fear of heresy before, so why now? That's why I think it must be something different than just the repetition of this idea by the Council.
 
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QuantaCura

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Just to add to what I said above, Archbishop Lefebrve taught the same thing:

“The Church is necessary; the Church is the one ark of salvation; we must state it. That has always been the adage of theology: 'Outside the Church there is no Salvation'... This does not mean that none among other religions may be saved. But none is saved by his erroneous and false religion. If men are saved in Protestantism, Buddhism or Islam, they are saved by the Catholic Church, by the grace of Our Lord, by the prayers of those in the Church, by the Blood of Our Lord as individuals, perhaps through the practice of their religion, perhaps because of what they understand in their religion, but not by their religion, since none can be saved by error.” (From an address given at Rennes, France in 1972.)​

“We are Catholics; we affirm our faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we affirm our faith in the divinity of the Holy Catholic Church, we think that Jesus Christ is the sole way, the sole truth, and that one cannot be saved outside Our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently outside His Mystical Spouse, the Holy Catholic Church. No doubt, the graces of God are distributed outside the Catholic Church; but those who are saved, even outside the Catholic Church, are saved by the Catholic Church, by Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if they do not know it, even if they are not aware of it . . .” (From a sermon preached in Geneva in 1976 at the First Mass of one of his newly ordained priests.)

How is this different than Vatican II?

Another Augustinian quote is that virtue and unity go hand in hand, and as history shows, schisms and heresies often arise when virtue in the Church is lacking. I think for most people who frequent SSPX chapels, they are scandalized by the laxity, irreverence, decadence, and worldiliness compromise of many in the Church and they just want to get away from it and live a good Catholic life and worship in a dignified manner. If we clean up our own house, the reason most people seek refuge with groups like the SSPX will cease to exist.

The doctrinal points of contention (and when you boil them down, they are very subtle despite the SSPX rhetoric to the contrary), seem to be more of a pretext to justifiy continued separation.

Sadly, when a group's existence is predicated on Rome being wrong, there is always the temptation to further justify one's separation by looking for more and more wrongs. This is how schisms become heresies--somthing right is judged a wrong by the one separating. We can already see this a little with their novel teaching on the nature of the Magisterium and their skewed ideas concerning religious liberty.

As the Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine recently remarked, now the SSPX leaders generally are clear-headed, but what about later down the road? Indefectibility and infallibility was promised to Rome, not Menzingen or Econe.

"The question for me and I think for Fr. Schmidberger [an SSPX superior] is always the same: What happens when that clear-headed elite of which he is the stellar example passes from the scene? Who will steer the course? Whence comes the indefectibility or infallibility?
RORATE CÆLI: Should the SSPX be excommunicated? An Apostolic Nuncio's thoughts
 
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I think part of it is really having examined the fruit of the earlier way of looking at things, well, it wasn't really very nice. Forced conversions, seeing all non-Christians as essentially Satanic, isn't really all that wonderful. Look at some of the terrible things you see about Muslims or neopagans on Christian websites which take a very conservative attitude to those who don't clearly accept Jesus. People seem all to ready to treat people as "other" even to the point of denying their humanity. So I think part of reason for the change in language is simply because people seemed to be failing to grasp the way it was explained before.

Mind you, I don't think the Catholic Church is nearly so ecumenical as to say "oh, everyone will probably get to Heaven no matter what". Some people will say that, but I have never got that impression from any of the better quality theologians or teachers.

As far as the SSPX - I think it is pretty simply as far as their priests go. Most of them do not want to submit to authority, and a number of them seem to be rather hateful. While the EO, or even some Anglican or Old Catholic groups would seem to be a logical fit, they would still be under authority.

I agree. I remember now that most people I talk to are pretty big on evangelism (one of the reasons I ended up here and not Orthodoxy).

Honestly the only time I get freaked out about "Vatican 2 and False Ecumenism" is when I listen to rad trads talk about how "Vatican 2 believeth that you can be a Satanist and be saved by the sacrament of ignorance. I seen it in da documents!" which is obviously false.
 
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Rhamiel

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The thing is, the "more nuanced" view was taught consistently before the Council as well--it was really nothing new. While the underlying idea that it was possible for even non-Catholics to be saved given certain circumstances goes all the way back to the Fathers, it was first really explained in detail around the 16th century. Both large swaths of people being led away into Protestantism and the discovery in the new world of huge populations of people where the Gospel was never promulgated led to this development. This is when St. Robert Bellarmine developed the terminology of belonging to the Church "in voto," as compared to being an actual member, for example.

From then, all the old theological manuals and catechisms right up to Vatican II affirm the same thing.

Likewise, the idea that people born into heresies are themselves not to be presumed guilty of heresy is also not new. It is found in the writings of Cardinal Manning concerning Anglicans (Manning is historically contrasted to his contemporary Cardinal Newman as being much more conservative than Newman on such matters).

This idea itself goes back at least to St. Augustine, who noted:


CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 43 (St. Augustine)

St. Augustine also taught the idea of partial communion:


In the Treatise which we Wrote against the Published Epistle of Parmenianus To...

These ideas didn't get rid of evangelical zeal or fear of heresy before, so why now? That's why I think it must be something different than just the repetition of this idea by the Council.


the Church has allways believed that those who not in formal union with the Church have a possibility of Salvation
those who have heard the good news and still reject it are held accountable are they not? St.Augustine said that they are not to be counted as heretics if they do not have "passionate obstinacy" and " and if they are with anxiety seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found it, such men are not to be counted heretics"
so it sounds like he is saying that the only excuse for heresy would be ignorance?
and i have allways believed in that, same for the natives of the New World that you mentioned in your post, before the coming of Columbus they had no oppertunity to hear the Gospel.

I will try to look up Cardnil Manning and read what he has to say on the issue

Jesus said this in Luke 10:16
He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me
 
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