Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops

▲ Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops(npr.org)

12 points by satvikpendem 6 hours ago | 10 comments

▲ michaelfm1211 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> declared SSPX priests to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer.

This is the big part no one's talking about. After the first Econe consecrations only the bishops were excommunicated, not all the clergy too. Before the recent consecrations, a lot of people (myself included) recognized the consecrations as wrong but were fine attending SSPX Masses because those priests were never excommunicated. Many traditional Catholics saw the schismatic bishops as the problematic leadership/history of an otherwise well-intentioned organization. But now, given all of the SSPX is excommunicated, attending SSPX Masses are clearly wrong. This is all a very sad situation. Please keep both the SSPX and the Pope, as well as all the faithful caught in the crossfire, in your prayers.

▲ dlcarrier 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

    …the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV, who had urged the SSPX to hold off for the sake of the church's unity.
    
    In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two bishops who participated in the ceremony.

If the Vatican excommunicated the bishops that were consecrated by SSPX, against the will of the Vatican, does that mean that the Vatican recognized the SSPX has authority to consecrate bishops?

It seems like a better power move would be to excommunicate the two bishops that performed the consecration ceremony, and not recognize the consecration.

	▲	ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Catholic sacramental theology, bishops always inherently possess what it takes to consecrate and ordain men to Holy Orders. It is part of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. What is disputed is indeed the jurisdiction, and the permission/mandate that must be obtained to do this thing. The Holy See is recognizing here that a valid ceremony took place, creating valid episcopal orders, but illicitly, and therefore they are forced to announce excommunications. Without jurisdiction, you see, SSPX cannot validly witness marriages, or absolve sins, and that is hotly disputed by them, for obvious and subtle reasons, but they can indeed baptize, confirm, and celebrate the Eucharist with illicit impunity, just like any vagante bishop. The other nuance is the latae sententiae nature of the offense. The headline is wrong because the mainstream media needs more drama and Rome-hate. The men all excommunicated themselves by the act, and it was not a juridical act by the Pope, just a finding of fact. It's the same with abortions. The third nuance is that "the Vatican" and Holy See are distinct entities, but it's so exhausting to explain this. But it looks like SSPX this time really has crossed the Rubicon, because the Holy See has also declared formal schism, and that's even worse, and it appears that the lay faithful are under sanction, which is unprecedented. Anyone who registers or volunteers as a formal parishioner of SSPX is subject to schism and excommunication at this point. That's chilling. I know a lot of people who have difficult decisions to make now. But nobody can say they couldn't see this coming!

▲ sunshine-o 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Society of St. Pius X seems to be the "no systemd" of the Catholic church.

	▲	dlcarrier 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've never understood the whole no systemd vs only systemd thing. There's lots of Linux distributions that support multiple init systems and lots that support systemd, but there doesn't seem to be much that support multiple init systems including systemd. MX Linux is the only one that's particularly common.
	▲	adfm 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		This no longer appears to be the case.
	▲	HardwareLust 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Clever!

▲ DivingForGold 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

More or less: The pot calling the kettle black ? If you research this you will discover St Pius is a quite conservative sect based in Switzerland, all their masses are in Latin and LBGT is not acceptable unless one remains celibate. On the other hand, the Vatican welcomes the LBGT community, and they had also some rather serious issues over decades with pedophilia. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971

	▲	michaelfm1211 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This isn't an issue over problems within the SSPX, it's over consecrating bishops without papal approval. If a liberal group did the same thing they would also incur latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication.
	▲	thunderfork 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm no Catholic, but I'm not sure that "tu quoque" overrides papal supremacy