Form Before Permission—and the Crisis It Reveals: Reply to Flanders on the SSPX

Of course, the Red Chinese regularly consecrate Bishops without Papal Mandate or permission, but that seems to be fine with Rome. Only Traditionalists are attacked.

From One Peter Five

By Caterina Lorenzo-Molo, PhD

The SSPX position is metaphysically absolute but pastorally differentiated.

A Metaphysical Diagnosis of the SSPX Consecrations

Recently, OnePeterFive published an article here on the coming consecration of bishops by the Fraternity of the Society of St. Pius X (FSSPX) on July 1. Given that the FSSPX is itself a controversial subject—and that the consecration of bishops without papal approval is widely regarded as the most controversial act in its history—the stakes of the present discussion are unusually high.

Yet the central issue is rarely addressed—that nearly every group today claiming continuity with Catholic Tradition either emerged from the FSSPX or exists precisely because Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Society he founded adhered to the Vincentian Canon—quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus—what the Archbishop called the Magisterium of All Time, and persisted in that fidelity despite sustained opposition.

It is within this context that the present article addresses the metaphysical questions required to judge the current moment rightly—questions long deferred, and for which the Church continues to pay a price. Before asking whether particular acts are permitted, prudent, or pastorally advisable, one must first ask what the realities under discussion are.

Metaphysical judgment precedes juridical and pastoral judgment—not as an abstraction, but as a condition of intelligibility. This ordering has been argued elsewhere:

Can the Novus Ordo be Reformed;What Paul VI Unleashed; and The Cost of Ignoring Normative and Metaphysical Judgment. When this order is reversed—as has repeatedly occurred in the post-conciliar period—authority is burdened with explaining identity, interpretation is tasked with resolving structural defects, and discipline is asked to maintain coherence where form itself no longer secures it. Appeals to unity or continuity are then made to do explanatory work without clarifying the register in which such continuity is being claimed. Distinctions collapse. Categories go unpoliced. Metaphysical questions are displaced by juridical or rhetorical certainty. The result is not clarity, but oscillation—between reform and counter-reform, permission and withdrawal, discipline and relapse.

Accordingly, what follows does not psychoanalyze motives or adjudicate subjective guilt. Nor is it written to defend the SSPX as such. It evaluates the arguments raised against the coming consecration where such arguments must be judged—by distinguishing validity from form, legitimacy from identity, governance from continuity, and pastoral application from metaphysical structure. These distinctions are assumed, not re-argued, because without them the present controversy cannot be assessed honestly.

The Warning Against Even a “Reverent” Novus Ordo

A central objection concerns the SSPX’s warning against attending even a “reverent” Novus Ordo Mass (NOM). The critique argues that because sacramental grace is real and necessary, discouraging attendance at valid Masses risks harming souls and obstructing reconciliation with Rome.

It is true that the SSPX holds that the NOM, as a rite, is objectively harmful to the faith. It is also true that the Society does not teach that attendance is always mortally sinful, nor that grace is never received. The problem is not whether the critique addresses a real SSPX claim—it does—but that it collapses distinctions the SSPX themselves insist upon: validity versus harmfulness, objective danger versus subjective culpability, the rite as such versus abuses or intentions, recognition of authority versus judgment of acts, and the presence of grace versus the normative ordering of a form to sanctification.

But the SSPX claim is not primarily pastoral. It is metaphysical. The NOM is judged defective as a liturgical form such that—even when valid—it weakens Catholic belief over time. The harm identified is formal and objective, not immediate or subjective. It concerns lex orandi, lex credendi: the erosion of sacrificial theology, the weakening of priestly ontology, and the replacement of precision with ambiguity. This harm operates cumulatively and generationally and is often invisible to the individual participant.

For this reason, the SSPX warning is not a blanket prudential directive. The Society explicitly acknowledges ignorance, lack of access, coercive circumstances, and stages of formation. One may therefore say that the SSPX position is metaphysically absolute but pastorally differentiated.

But the critique assumes that if grace is received, warning against the rite must be pastorally harmful. This assumption is neither Catholic nor metaphysically coherent. Grace can be received through deficient instruments, and valid sacraments can still obscure truth, weaken virtue, and habituate error (see Summa Theologiae III, q. 64, a. 5; q. 69, a. 8; q. 60, a. 2; I-II, q. 49, a. 3; q. 81, a. 7). Telling the truth about an objective defect is not automatically pastorally harmful; withholding such truth can be more damaging when the crisis is systemic and cumulative.

The SSPX position mirrors St. Augustine’s articulation during the Donatist controversy—a sacrament may be valid and grace truly received even when the instrument is defective. Validity does not sanctify the defect, nor does grace negate the need to judge form. But the critique treats sacramental efficacy as though it exhausted the question, thereby collapsing efficacy into form. This is not the SSPX claim.

Nor are the SSPX pastorally careless in practice. Their clergy do not interrogate converts about past NOM attendance; do not declare souls harmed beyond recovery; and frequently counsel prudence, gradualism, and formation. Their rhetoric is hard because their metaphysical judgment is hard; but their pastoral application is not mechanically rigid (see our articles here, here and here on the topic of sacred music and the SSPX pastoral approach). To conflate public doctrinal clarity with individual pastoral counsel is a category error. Note: Our claim pertains to normative posture and institutional practice, and not the acts of individual priests—although our experience with their priests has been consistent with this.

In sum, the SSPX judges the NOM harmful as a rite. This remains true even where grace is present. The critique instead addresses a caricature by treating the judgment as indiscriminate and purely pastoral.

Why Bishop Schneider’s Answer Does Not Contradict the Argument

The critique appeals to a response by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who stated that it is incorrect to claim one should never attend a reverent NOM, since the rite can be celebrated reverently and is not heretical.

This response is orthodox, but irrelevant to the metaphysical argument. His Lordship answers a different question, in a different register. He addresses sacramental validity, doctrinal non-heresy, and the possibility of reverent celebration—points not disputed here.

The metaphysical question is prior—whether the NOM, by its form and finality, is intrinsically ordered to safeguard sacrificial transcendence in a stable and self-securing way without extraordinary discipline acting against its own operative principles. Bishop Schneider was not asked this question; therefore his answer does not address it.

Metaphysical judgment does not operate on binaries of “allowed/not allowed” or “heretical/not heretical.” It asks what a thing is, what it is ordered toward, and how it operates by nature. Thus both statements can be true without contradiction—the NOM can be celebrated reverently and is not heretical, while its structure lacks the intrinsic form necessary to reliably generate the end reform seeks. Attempting reform under such conditions is, as one observer put here, is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. To conscript Bishop Schneider’s response as a refutation is another category error. It treats a pastoral-juridical affirmation as though it answered a metaphysical question of identity and structure, when it does not.

The Question of Invalidity and “Corrupted Faith”

The critique then raises a position sometimes ascribed to the SSPX—that a Novus Ordo Mass might be invalid due to a priest’s “corrupted faith”—admits uncertainty as to whether this reflects official SSPX theology, and rejects it as undermining sacramental confidence.

But the SSPX does not teach this. What exists in SSPX discourse is narrower and older: the classical sacramental principle that the minister must intend to do what the Church does (see Trent here), and a conditional concern raised by Archbishop Lefebvre that in cases of positive contrary intention—such as explicitly rejecting the sacrificial nature of the Mass—intention could be defective.

This is not ignorance, poor formation, or modernist tendencies. It concerns explicit contrary intention, a very high bar. The concern is theoretical, exceptional, and diagnostic—not pastoral or presumptive. But the critique expands this into a generalized anxiety about sacramental reliability, thereby misrepresenting the claim.

But there is a deeper and more methodological problem. To invoke a speculative claim whose official status is admitted to be uncertain and then critique it as dangerous is poor theological method. It shifts attention away from liturgical form—where the SSPX argument actually lies—and toward sacramental alarmism, inflating narrowly defined sacramental concerns into generalized fear about sacramental reliability.

This confusion is further reflected in appeals to Apostolicae Curae in the article’s addendum here. Unlike Leo XIII’s judgment on Anglican Orders, the SSPX argument does not conclude invalidity. It identifies a metaphysical defect of form whose effects are cumulative and corrosive even where validity and grace remain. Importing a paradigm ordered toward invalidity into an argument that explicitly avoids that conclusion only reinforces the category error.

The addendum also appeals to a “knowledgeable SSPX source” said to have confirmed that the article represented SSPX positions correctly. But the issue is not whether a private source offered reassurance; it is whether the positions are represented with the distinctions the SSPX themselves insist upon publicly. In the text under review, the claim is framed broadly in terms of “corrupted faith,” whereas the concern historically raised by Archbishop Lefebvre is far narrower—limited to cases of positive contrary intention. Measured against the Society’s own published distinctions, the article’s formulation constitutes an expansion of the claim and therefore a misrepresentation, regardless of any informal confirmation offered after the fact. That narrowness, however, does not exhaust the Society’s critique. Distinct from exceptional questions of sacramental intention, the SSPX has long maintained that even valid rites can exert gradual and cumulative deformative effects on faith and worship through weakened signification and habituation—effects now measurable not in theory, but across more than six decades.

Asymmetry and the Claim of Neutrality

Although the critique claims not to judge either side, judgments are not evenly distributed. SSPX positions are framed as risky or destabilizing, while Roman ambiguity is contextualized as provisional or procedural. SSPX clarity is treated as excess; Roman indeterminacy as patience.

Appeals to clerical resolution function asymmetrically. The SSPX is expected to restrain itself in advance, while Roman silence is afforded interpretive latitude. This reflects a substantive ecclesiological judgment—institutional unity and sacramental availability are prioritized, while metaphysical clarity is treated as potentially disruptive.

This pattern mirrors a broader post-conciliar inversion. Continuity is invoked without specifying its metaphysical register, and authority is asked to resolve what form no longer secures. Appeals to authority thus function as deferrals rather than resolutions.

Moving Forward

The present conflict cannot be resolved by appeals to process or patience, because it did not arise from a lack of these. It arose from a refusal to clarify form. Once metaphysical judgment is displaced, authority is forced to govern what it no longer defines. The result is managed instability—a condition that has marked the Church since the Council, where strategic forecasting replaces ontological clarity and fidelity becomes tactical calculation—hence, the speculation and predictions.

This article refuses that substitution. No amount of permission or regulation can resolve a contradiction at the level of form. And to ask the faithful to navigate instability indefinitely on the promise of eventual clarification is not prudence; it is abdication.

The crisis does not hinge on July 1 in principle, but it does hinge on it in fact. For so long as the SSPX has insisted on the necessity of metaphysical judgment—of form and telos—it has rendered visible what administrative management has sought to contain. In that respect, July 1 matters because it exposes a contradiction long tolerated: a concrete moment at which unresolved metaphysical disorder can no longer be deferred without consequence. Fidelity consists in refusing to treat contradiction as a principle of unity. Catholic truth remains quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, and as Cardinal Newman warned, young birds do not grow into fishes.

A Final Note

We would like to end by addressing a more personal concern of a father: “How can I tell my child to avoid sacramental grace?” The premise is sound—grace is real and vital. But the question misunderstands what is being judged. The SSPX does not deny grace in the NOM. It judges the rite as a form and asks whether it is intrinsically ordered to safeguard Catholic belief in a stable way.

Catholic theology has always recognized that grace can be received through deficient instruments, and that grace does not canonize the instrument. Warning against a rite judged harmful is not equivalent to telling souls to “avoid grace.”

We live in strange and painful times. When worship itself is destabilized, confusion manifests emotionally as well as intellectually. While metaphysical clarity does not eliminate pain, it names its cause and prevents confusion from masquerading as resolution. What has long been deferred now presses with urgency—not because the Church’s identity is uncertain, but because its public expression has been permitted to drift from the form she has always possessed.