Our English contributor Fr. Thomas Crean, OP is a superb dogmatic theologian, whose work I always enjoy publishing. In this admirable essay, he has navigated just about every treacherous shoal without crashing against the rocks. I even like how he handles the canonization question, on which he and I differ (as can be see in print). The views expressed in this essay are eminently reasonable, and I believe they could actually serve as a serious basis for unification talks, if such were desired on both sides.—PAK
How might peace be achieved between the authorities of the Church and the Society of St Pius X? We can approach the question in two ways: the strictly doctrinal, and the practical.
Doctrinal
From a doctrinal point of view, it should not be difficult for the SSPX to be recognised as Catholic. Now more than half-a-century old, the Society, unlike many clerics currently “in canonical good standing,” has not denied any dogma defined by the Church or taught by her universal and ordinary magisterium. This in itself is a sign that the Society, despite having “impaired communion,” at least from the sociological point of view, with the rest of the Church, is nevertheless not in a state of schism: at least if St Jerome was correct when he stated that “there is no schism that does not devise some heresy for itself, that it may appear to have had a reason for separating from the Church.”1
The Second Vatican Council
The protocol signed by Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 is a natural and useful starting point in the quest for doctrinal peace. As a statement of doctrine, it was not repudiated by the archbishop: he simply came to believe, rightly or wrongly, that Pope John Paul II and the Vatican could not be relied on to protect his priestly society, in the face of the almost universal hostility toward it of the episcopate at that time.
This protocol recognises the pope as the head of the body of bishops, and the rights of the magisterium as laid down by Lumen Gentium in the Second Vatican Council. It also requires of the SSPX a “positive attitude of study and communication with the Apostolic See” of anything in the conciliar documents, or in later reforms of liturgy and law, which does not appear easily reconcilable with tradition. This last requirement is a reasonable one: after all, why would any Catholic want to have any other kind of attitude?
It is evident that the SSPX must accept that the Second Vatical Council was a legitimately convened ecumenical council which therefore enjoyed the right of teaching, and that its documents were duly promulgated. The popes have repeatedly declared that it was such a council, and to suppose that popes could err on such a question would be to destroy the visibility of the Church. As Gregory Mammas, one of the Greek bishops reconciled to the Church at the Council of Florence, warned the intransigent bishop of Ephesus, Mark Eugenikos, those who reject an ecumenical council “always receive some new name”—other, that is, than that of Catholic.2
Since Archbishop Lefebvre, the founder of the SSPX, was a prominent figure at Vatican II and signed its documents,3 it should not be difficult for the Society to recognise that council as indeed having whatever authority it claimed for itself. Nevertheless, one occasionally hears it argued in so-called “Lefebvrist circles” that by designating Vatican II as a pastoral council, the pope and the bishops renounced their power of using it to teach, and that as a result its documents enjoy no kind of claim on the assent of the faithful. This argument is sophistical, and in fact relies on the same division between the doctrinal and the pastoral that so many Catholics rightly protested against during the pontificate of Pope Francis. What else are the faithful to pasture on, if not the truth?
Obviously this requirement to accept Vatican II as a legitimate ecumenical council does not imply that the SSPX are obliged to accept the truth of all the propositions contained in its documents, or the wisdom of all its exhortations, recommendations, suggestions, or injunctions. Rather, the members of the Society, like everyone else, are obliged to accept its documents according to the usual norms for such reception. These norms include the duty to accept anything in the documents that is taught definitively, the right to request clarifications about teachings whose meanings are ambiguous or which appear to contradict or to be hard to reconcile with the tradition of the Church, and the duty to reject any manifest errors that have slipped into the texts.4
Religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism
There are three topics within the conciliar documents that are frequently presented as obstacles to doctrinal peace: religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism. Often, official or unofficial spokesmen for the Society will say that Vatican II erred on these points; they may seek to save the indefectibility of the Church by adding that Vatican II did not fulfil the conditions necessary for infallible teaching when it spoke in these three areas.
In reality, none of these three topics should be a barrier to doctrinal peace between the SSPX and the Holy See, for the following reasons.
