The 60-Year Battle for Tradition: In Defence of the SSPX

Without Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX, there would be no TLM and very little Tradition left to defend. It would all have been destroyed post VII.

From One Peter Five

By Lt Col James Bogle (Ret), former President of Una Voce

When writing about the last sixty years battle in the Church for the preservation of the traditional Catholic faith, no history would be complete without recalling the stand taken by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the community he founded, the Society of St Pius X (“SSPX”).

This is all the more so given the recent announcement that the SSPX is considering consecrating more bishops to replace those now ageing and dying.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a regular attender at the SSPX Masses, so I have no particular “axe to grind”.

I am a convert from Anglicanism of fifty years standing, having converted in April 1976 being received on Easter Monday of that year.

I am the first Catholic in my family (so far as I know) since the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.[1]

I therefore came to the Catholic Church with no pre-conceived notions or habits formed by a Catholic education and (happily) escaped the modern Catholic tendency to idolize popes, bishops and clergy as if they were “little gods”.

Unfortunately, misguided pundits like John F Salza Esq, Matt Fradd and Larry Chap (with his Gaudium et Spes Blog) have fallen foul of this latter-day clericalism and papolatry, and so criticise the SSPX under the influence of those two false ideologies.

Worse, they do so from a position of ignorance of the true beliefs of the SSPX.

John F Salza, Esq., is an attorney, and a blogger and, in recent years, he has made it his mission to launch a rather pointless and wholly unnecessary one-man campaign against the SSPX, abusively and offensively calling them unorthodox, in schism, transgressing divine law and even in heresy.

John Salza could hardly be more wrong.

Mr. Salza thinks the SSPX is akin to the Sedevacantists when very little research is required to recognise that the SSPX is one of the most vociferous critics of the Sedevacantists.

He further errs in his understanding of their position based upon “supplied jurisdiction” (Ecclesia supplet). 

His criticism falls in the logical fallacy of petitio principii and simply begs the question at issue.

“Supplied jurisdiction” (Ecclesia supplet) is an extraordinary authority validly exercised by clergy and bishops when they lack necessary, ordinary jurisdiction. It acts as a safety measure for the faithful, ensuring salvation of souls in emergencies, crises, or whenever proper authorisation is unavailable.

It is applied in situations of “common error” (where people believe a priest has authority when he hasn’t) or “positive and probable doubt” regarding a priest’s actual authority, or when higher authority is unreachable by dint of persecution or geography. However, it is not limited to such situations, neither, logically, could it be so limited.

If authority is unreachable by dint of error, corruption or heresy, then jurisdiction can equally be “supplied”.

Salza claims that the SSPX, being outside the Church, cannot have “supplied jurisdiction” because it is outside the Church, a classic circular, question-begging argument.

In fact, the Church “supplies” for this absence of jurisdiction on the part of a priest or bishop, because the Church is not merely today’s pope and bishops but rather all the faithful, including all the popes and bishops that ever were.

We speak of the Church militant (now on earth), the Church suffering (in purgatory) and the Church triumphant (in heaven) but all three are the Church, not just the first.

The Church’s missio comes first and foremost from Christ, not just from the Pope. If popes and bishops neglect their duty, or fall into serious error, then it is the duty of orthodox bishops to continue Christ’s missio even if corrupt popes or bishops try to impede them.

This is what Bishop Liutprand of Cremona did when the Papacy was corrupted by Pope John XII, Bishop Robert Grosseteste did when threatened by Pope Innocent IV with excommunication for not agreeing to his corrupt nepotism, and what Archbishop Lefebvre did when faced with an even graver crisis.

To argue that a corrupt pope must be obeyed before Christ is to defy St Peter’s command that we must obey God before men (Acts 5.29) since a pope is not Christ Himself but simply His vicar. To claim otherwise is idolatry and papolatry.

Be ye never so high, God is above you.

Neither is it Protestantism to say so, as Salza and others foolishly argue.

Protestantism is not just “private judgement” since we are all, as moral beings created in the image of God, obliged to exercise private judgement every day of our lives. God demands that we do so and that is why he gave us free will. It is foolish to call this “Protestantism”. We are not mere robots who, when told by a prelate to jump, respond merely by saying “how high?”.

Protestantism means using private judgement to interpret Scripture contrary to the Church, rejecting most, if not all, of the Sacraments and rejecting the whole idea of Papacy. Merely, disagreeing with the Pope does not make one a Protestant, save when he teaches infallibly or authoritatively[2].

The SSPX do none of those things but hold fast to Catholic teaching on these as on all other issues.

Missio, hierarchy and jurisdiction come, like the Church itself, from God, not from mere men, even men who are popes.

John Salza and those like him have failed to grasp these points and have a surprisingly earthbound view of them.

They likewise forget the supreme principle: salus animarum suprema lex – “the salvation of souls is the supreme law”. For them, the supreme law is the opinion, however false, of the merely human hierarchy of the Church, a belief that is perilously close to idolatry, putting the created above the Creator. To be sure, Christ works through His Church but not through prelates who brazenly repudiate the unchanging, traditional, infallible teaching of the Church.

The critics also forget that the purpose of the Church is to save souls, not merely to serve its human hierarchy, let alone to compel obedience to corrupt and heretical bishops bent on destroying the traditions, and traditional teaching, of the Church.

I, personally, hear the traditional Roman rite of Mass in an ordinary Parish in the Archdiocese of Southwark in England, UK, a Mass celebrated every Sunday with the full permission of the archbishop, under Traditionis Custodes, and I sing in the choir.

I am not, therefore, a partisan apologist for the SSPX and am an entirely independent commentator basing myself exclusively upon the facts, and upon orthodox and approved Catholic theology, canon law and tradition.

I do not agree entirely with all that the SSPX teaches but I recognise the validity of their stand for the salvation of souls. I further recognise that progress in the wider availability of the traditional Roman rite was made much more possible thanks to their stand.

Now, I have no doubt that Mr Salza is a fine fellow and a devout Catholic but, on this subject, he has got his facts seriously wrong.

How do I know?

Because I have seen the evidence.

What is the evidence?

As is well-known, the late Pope Francis, in 2016, the “Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy”, declared that he would officially recognise the Sacrament of Penance and Confession administered and heard by priests of the SSPX.

This was made explicit in the final paragraph of the Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis,dated 1 September 2015 which stated thus:

A final consideration concerns those faithful who for various reasons choose to attend churches officiated by priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X. This Jubilee Year of Mercy excludes no one. From various quarters, several brother Bishops have told me of their good faith and sacramental practice…motivated by the need to respond to the good of these faithful, through my own disposition, I establish that those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins.

And at paragraph 12 of his Apostolic Letter entitled Misericordia et Misera, of 20 November 2016, Pope Francis wrote:

12. …For the Jubilee Year I had also granted that those faithful who, for various reasons, attend churches officiated by the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, can validly and licitly receive the sacramental absolution of their sins. For the pastoral benefit of these faithful…I have personally decided to extend this faculty beyond the Jubilee Year, until further provisions are made, lest anyone ever be deprived of the sacramental sign of reconciliation through the Church’s pardon.

And this is the current situation, continued by Pope Leo XIV.

Observant readers will have noticed that Pope Francis refers to them as “the faithful” (not as “schismatics”, “heretics” or “unfaithful”), that he does not refer to the Fraternity as the “so-called” or “bogus” Fraternity and that he is indifferent to the “various reasons” why they attend. That means that he does not differentiate between those receiving the Sacraments administered by the SSPX from those receiving the Sacraments in other Catholic contexts.

That is, of course, highly significant.

Salza wrongly claims that this recognition fell with the death of Pope Francis but that is simply fallacious. Papal legislation does not fall upon the death of a pope but only when reversed or repealed.

If the SSPX were in schism, heresy or error, as the likes of John Salza and Larry Chapp argue, then Pope Francis would not have granted what he granted, nor would he have referred to its adherents as “the faithful”.

Their argument, therefore, is not with the SSPX but with Popes Francis and Leo.

In fact, matters go even further than that.

I, myself, visited Bishop Bernard Fellay at Écône, Switzerland, with Michael Matt of The Remnant, in May 2015, when I was then President of Una Voce, when we were on a tour of various Catholic sites with Remnant Tours.

Bishop Fellay kindly agreed to see us and was most gracious. I asked him how his relations were with the Holy See and, to my surprise, he said that they were quite good. I asked what he meant and he told me.

He astonished us by recounting that Pope Francis had, two months earlier, appointed him a judge of the Roman Rota to hear all annulment applications from the SSPX secular laity.

This, in effect, meant that Pope Francis recognised the SSPX marriages as valid since, if they were all invalid, as so many bishops claim, then it would be pointless to apply for their annulment, they being already universally null and void.

I therefore said to Bishop Fellay, “but, my Lord, this means that the Pope recognises the SSPX marriages!”

“Yes”, said Bishop Fellay, “it does”.

I was amazed since this had been a bone of contention between the SSPX, the Holy See and the vast majority of bishops since Archbishop Lefebvre first ordained priests in 1976 without the approval of Pope Paul VI.

I remember the controversy at the time since that was the very year that I converted and became a Catholic (the year of the lowest number of conversions in recorded history, by the way).

However, that was not all.

Bishop Fellay went on to show us a letter from Pope Francis granting him and the SSPX the right to ordain whomever they wished to the priesthood without the prior approval of the local bishop, the Bishop of Sion.

I was so astounded that I nearly fell off my chair!

This was not only regularisation but positive privilege – a privilege that very few religious orders and communities are permitted.

Given such a privilege, it is plainly obvious that the SSPX are not merely regularised but now enjoy a position of privilege within the Church, however much some officials of the Holy See may continue to call them “irregular”. In this regard, those officials are plainly being self-contradictory.

It is further plainly obvious that the SSPX cannot thus be said to be in error or in schism, still less in “heresy”, as Salza, Chapp and others wrongly claim.

Larry Chapp, in a frankly rather silly and thoroughly uncharitable blog post, accused the SSPX of “cosplaying”, “a rodeo”, “risible nonsense”, “self-defeat”, “fictional concoction”, “insouciance”, “an insult to Protestants who are serious Christians”, being a “creepy, crypto cult” and more besides, whereas it was Chapp’s post that was “risible nonsense”, to use his inapt phrase.

Chapp even claims (without a skerrick of evidence) that the SSPX have a very narrow view of the maxim extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“no salvation outside the Church”) whereas it is more often the critics of the SSPX who have such a view, claiming the SSPX are excluded from the Church.

The learned opinion of the Doctors of the Church, particularly St Thomas Aquinas[3], is that the minimum needed for salvation is contrition for sin and belief, at a minimum, in the Trinity and the Incarnation (whether implicitly or explicitly is a much debated issue) but that one must embrace the Catholic faith, so soon as one knows and believes it to be true, and so be water-baptised, if one has not already been.

This view paved the way for the concepts of “baptism of desire” and “invincible ignorance” both taught by the infallible Extraordinary Magisterium.[4]

I see no evidence that the SSPX rejects those magisterial teachings.

Chapp would doubtless be surprised to hear that St Leonard of Port Maurice taught that most Catholics (yes, Catholics!) go to Hell because they do not take the Church’s teachings seriously.

St Leonard, despite living in the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps had in mind the vapid, mushy, fogbound, weak and Modernist faith of most Catholics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One can only pray and hope that they all convert and are saved.

But Chapp seems little concerned about them. He is more concerned to abuse and insult the SSPX, and yet, as stated above, it is the salvation of souls which should be the supreme law.

He accuses the SSPX of “cosplaying at Catholicism for largely psychological and cultural and political reasons” but is unable to name what those psycho-socio-political reasons are. This is simply unsubstantiated insult for the sake of insult and is deeply uncharitable.

Even more irrationally, he concludes that they should be excommunicated and that “the Church would be better off without them” thereby self-defeating his main point that they are already outside the Church.

Pope Francis begs to differ. Instead, he granted them a very significant privilege.

No wonder Bishop Fellay said that his relations with the Holy See were “quite good”!

That position continues to this day with Pope Leo who, so far as I am aware, has not rescinded any of what Pope Francis granted.

Whether this will survive further episcopal consecrations by the SSPX remains to be seen.

Readers will recall that it was the consecration of bishops in 1988 that led Cardinal Gantin (not Pope John Paul II, as is often falsely claimed) to declare, on 1 July 1988, that those bishops who had been consecrated, and their consecrators, were, ipso facto, excommunicate, latae sententiae (i.e. automatically).

Thus, they were not being excommunicated by an exercise of ecclesiastical discretion but only by automatic application of the law.

This was important because, under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, any appeal against such a penalty automatically suspends the penalty and the SSPX did, indeed, appeal, loyally observing the canon law of the Church.

Under canon 1353 of the 1983 Code, the filing of a formal appeal or “recourse” (an administrative challenge) immediately suspends the execution of the penalty, meaning the person is not bound by the penalty while the appeal is pending.

This applies to both judicial sentences and extra-judicial decrees that impose or declare a penalty.

Now, given that the appeal of the SSPX was never formally heard by the Holy See until shortly before the motu proprio letter of Pope Benedict XVI entitled Summorum Pontificum, which formally lifted the excommunications, this means that, legally, the SSPX bishops and consecrators were never formally excommunicated, the excommunications being suspended by their appeal.

John Salza, though a lawyer, clearly never bothered himself to investigate the legal position of the SSPX before diving into attacking and criticising them. That is plainly unjust and particularly so in a lawyer.

The decree of Cardinal Gantin was followed, a day later, on 2 July 1988, by the Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei Adflicta of Pope John Paul II in which, after failing to recount the many dishonest and deceptive methods of negotiation pursued by Vatican officials in their dealings with the SSPX, unjustly seeking to place all the blame on the SSPX, the Pope more charitably and justly went on to say:

To all those Catholic faithful who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition I wish to manifest my will to facilitate their ecclesial communion by means of the necessary measures to guarantee respect for their rightful aspirations. In this matter I ask for the support of the bishops and of all those engaged in the pastoral ministry in the Church.

He further added:

Moreover, respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.

This charitable, generous and just directive of Pope John Paul II was widened yet further by Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum and then sharply – and highly uncharitably – curtailed by Pope Francis in Traditionis Custodes of 16 July 2021, a very curious reversal given the permissions and privileges he had already granted to the SSPX.

It was almost as if Pope Francis was trying to shoehorn all Catholics, devoted to the historic Roman rite, into the SSPX.

However, the genie was out of the bottle and the idea that the ancient Roman rite, nearly 2,000 years old, could supposedly be suppressed, then be declared never to have been abrogated (numquam abrogatam as Summorum Pontificum put it) and then be restricted again, now appeared simply foolish, and the chopping and changing attitude of the Holy See looked pettifogging, churlish and futile.

Indeed, the general effect of Traditionis Custodes has not been to curtail interest in the ancient Roman rite but rather to increase interest in it significantly, not least amongst young people.

Some say that Pope Francis has, inadvertently, been the greatest ever recruiting sergeant for the traditional Roman rite as more and more people wanted to know why he was so determined to restrict the ancient rite and want to know more about it.

However, be that as it may, there is no mistaking the curious liberality Pope Francis has shown toward the SSPX.

No-one can now rationally argue that the SSPX is anything but fully regular, nay, privileged, and has been granted a special position.

I would, however, go further and argue that the SSPX has, by its courage, zeal, tenacity and careful negotiations with the Holy See blazed a path of faithfulness that is, in many ways, a model for others and is reminiscent of St Athanasius during the period when, as St Jerome put it, “the whole world awoke, and groaned, to find itself Arian” (“ingemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est” in his Dialogus contra Luciferianos, AD 379).

In the time of St Athansius, the Roman Emperor and most of the powerful rulers were Arian heretics and the Pope and most of the bishops were compromisers, a situation not entirely different from our own day.

There is really no excuse for modern commentators to misrepresent the true position of the SSPX, as John Salza and Larry Chapp do, since the true position has been very well and very succinctly set out on the webpages of the SSPX USA for many decades.

The problem is that very few commentators do them the justice and courtesy of ever bothering to read their arguments. They prefer to condemn with prejudicial, sloppy and hasty pre-judgments which are, of course the very acme of uncharity and injustice.

Those arguments can be found here on the webpage of the SSPX District of the USA.

To understand properly the canonical arguments that apply to the SSPX’s situation, one must recognize that the Catholic Church is suffering through an internal crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Those who fail to see and understand this will never understand the position of the SSPX, the case for “supplied jurisdiction”, nor, indeed, will they understand what is happening in the Church today.

That clearly includes Larry Chapp who, in his article, went so far as to claim that “the putative ‘crisis’ to which the SSPX is responding is a manufactured one of its own making”.

He seems to be seriously arguing that it is the SSPX who created the crisis in which the Church today finds itself, a position which has but to be stated for its absurdity to be instantly manifest.

Moreover, one would have to be wilfully blind not to see that the Church is currently suffering an unprecedented crisis.

This grave crisis has led to what is, in canonical and theological terms, a “state of necessity,”[5] which is the basis for the “supplied jurisdiction” that applies to the SSPX’s priests in exercising their ministry for the salvation of souls, remembering that the salvation of souls is the supreme law.

Whilst I would not go so far as the SSPX in their criticism of the new rite of Mass – the Pauline-Bugninian rite – it is a fact that this new rite is a recent and novel invention of men whereas the ancient Roman rite is a development, inspired diachronically by the Holy Spirit, derived partly from the ancient Jewish Temple worship, and faithfully and lovingly preserved intact over centuries.

The ancient Roman rite has remained largely the same for most of 2,000 years, is the oldest surviving rite in the entire Christian Church and every reform before 1970 consisted in returning it to the original form of the rite, shedding unnecessary accretions that had built up over the centuries.

By contrast, the Pauline-Bugninian rite was simply invented by a committee of liberal Catholics and Protestants, led by Msgr Annibale Bugnini, in a Swiss hotel between lavish courses and fine wines.

It was finished off in a restaurant in Trastevere, where a revision of the canon of the fabricated 2nd Eucharistic Prayer was scrawled on a paper table napkin apparently by Fr Louis Bouyer, assisted by Dom Bernard Botte,[6] in order to meet the morning deadline imposed by Bugnini (a monk friend of mine has, in his possession, a portion of that paper table napkin).

The 2nd Eucharistic Prayer, said to be the ancient Hippolytan Canon, is, in fact, nothing of the sort (put the two side and side and that rapidly becomes evident) and, in any case, Hippolytus, for all his sanctity, was an antipope.

More novel still, the 4th Eucharistic Prayer is a complete invention from scratch.

Nonetheless, popes can give approval to newer rites, even if they are deficient, and the Novus Ordo, though highly defective, is still valid and licit provided it is celebrated according to the rubrics and traditionally (such as is done at London’s Brompton Oratory).

Sadly, however, in the vast majority of parishes, worldwide, it is done appallingly badly and clean contrary to the wishes of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.

That, in and of itself, is already a huge crisis and its fruits have been seen in a dramatic loss of faith, mass exodus and apostacy from the Church and, no doubt, a simply vast loss of souls.

Anyone thinking this is not a “state of necessity” must be in a permanent state of narcolepsy.

But liturgy alone is not the totality of the crisis in the Church.

The crisis also consists of a massive apostasy and dramatic and shocking loss of faith since the Council, followed by rank corruption amongst the clergy and bishops, and in the hierarchy generally, and the emergence of hitherto largely unheard-of abuses, not even excluding cases of child abuse and paedophilia amongst the clergy, reaching even up to the level of archbishop and cardinal.

If this is not a crisis then what is?

If this is not a crisis then what is?

Indeed, it is a crisis that has been foretold in numerous prophecies reaching back as far at the 16th century.[7]

In such a situation there can be no doubt that a “state of necessity” exists.

Pope Nicholas the Great (a great defender of papal authority) developed the Church’s understanding and teaching on the subject of “the state of necessity” and of epikeia (see footnote 5 above). Despite his strong insistence on the importance of papal authority, he recognised the consecrations of bishops in mission territory (notably Bulgaria) made when a state of necessity required it and when it was not possible to seek prior papal approbation.

His teachings, found, for example, in his 866 AD letter to the Bulgarians (Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum[8]), establish that in extreme or “evident” need, certain laws may have to be set aside, ignored or breached to ensure the higher laws of justice and of the salvation of souls.

In modern times, the “state of necessity” is a critical concept in Canon Law (specifically Canon 1323 of the 1983 Code) which exempts individuals from penalties for breaking a law if they acted out of necessity to avoid a greater evil.

Accordingly, the principle is a cornerstone of the legal defence argued by the SSPX sufficient to justify their consecration of bishops without the specific sanction of the Holy See.

They point to Pope St Nicholas I’s precedent as evidence that the “salvation of souls” is the supreme law (salus animarum suprema lex) and that this necessarily overrides technical and lesser legal breaches.

But the “state of necessity” is not confined to such a situation but arises whenever there are impediments to obtaining full papal approbation. Such impediments, argue the SSPX, can include a situation where a bad pope declines to do his duty to preserve the faith intact.

Some critics have argued that only the Supreme Pontiff can ultimately judge if there is a “state of necessity” but this argument is clearly circular and question-begging. If it is a pope who is the cause of the problem then obviously he cannot fairly it in judgment upon his own misdeeds since that would breach the fundamental principle of natural justice, nemo judex in causa sua – “no-one may justly be a judge in his own case” – since, obviously, a wicked pope is likely to find himself innocent of any charges and will believe himself right and justified.

One does not ask a robber to be the judge in his own trial since he will inevitably find himself not guilty and get away scot-free. An evil pope is like a kind of robber just as evil councils in times past have been called “robber councils.”[9]

The current “state of necessity” is obvious to all who have eyes to see and who know that the vast majority of bishops around the world are simply allowing false teaching to run riot throughout their dioceses, to the utter ruination of souls.

This “state of necessity” began some time after the Council and clearly required remedial and decisive action. Archbishop Lefebvre, alone among the college of Bishops, had the courage and foresight to take the necessary action.

Moreover, as seen above, his stand has now been vindicated even by the Supreme Pontiff himself.

Once these facts are assimilated, and understood, it can readily be seen that the critics and abusers of the SSPX are not only wrong but very seriously wrong. They have been unjust, uncharitable and should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for so traducing a body of the faithful whose motives, doubtless with individual exceptions, have been honest and sincere.

In the light of the foregoing, the stand taken by the late Archbishop Lefebvre is now seen to have been not only courageous and faithful but prescient and wise, obedient to the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church and of our Lord Himself, always focussing on what is supreme above all: the salvation of souls.

To that end, I have little doubt that the time will come – perhaps sooner than we think – when Archbishop Lefebvre will be canonised a saint for his courageously faithful stand against the wrong turning taken by so many in the hierarchy of the Church after Vatican II.

His stand has been more than justified since, not only by Summorum Pontificum but also even by Pope Francis in his dealings with the SSPX, as I report above.

Doubtless there are numerous mistakes, errors, personality clashes and foolish judgments that can be laid at the door of the SSPX but what religious community throughout the history of the Church can truly claim to have been free of such human failings?

It is the general thrust and direction upon which I am commenting and, on that count, the SSPX is now shown to have been remarkably vindicated in almost every respect.

The critics and abusers, therefore, are barking up the wrong tree.

I would also say that, in the last sixty years in which we traditional Catholics have tried our best to defend the historic traditions of the Church against a massive tidal wave of Modernism, heresy and, all too often, outright filth and perversity (not even excluding the abuse of little children by paedophile clergy), the stand of the SSPX has occupied an important and historic place.

They have certainly not been the only defenders of the historic traditions of the Church – far from it – but they have been a prominent one and one whose story ought to be read and understood by every faithful Catholic so that the calumny and detraction that has been thrown at them for these last sixty years will cease and desist as it ought to have done long ago.

Let us, then, devoutly pray for the same, in all charity and justice.

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[1] Despite being a 5th generation Australian, now living in the UK, having been brought up here in the Chiltern hills of England as a child, my family’s origins go back well before 1200 in Scotland and several of my family were priests before the Reformation in Scotland e.g. Sir Patrick Bogill, curate of the church of Cadder in Lanarkshire in the Scottish Lowlands. Before the Reformation, all secular clergy bore the title “Sir” (the equivalent of “Don” in Spain and Italy) and only religious clergy were titled “Father”, as one can readily see from reading Shakespeare whose plays feature secular clergy such as Sir Christopher Urswick, Sir Topaz, Sir Hugh Evans, and religious clergy such as Friar Francis, Friar John and Friar Lawrence. Life was more colourful and multi-faceted, then, compared with our rather narrow, monochrome, anglophone view that all priests must be called “Father”. After the Reformation, in the anglophone world, secular clergy were styled “Mister” and religious clergy were styled “Father” right up until the 1820s when, in English-speaking countries, the titles became mixed due, largely, to clandestinity owing to persecution. On the continent of Europe, however, the old tradition endures with only religious clergy being called “Father” (padre, pater, pere &c). Secular clergy still retain the old titles equivalent to those of knighthood.

After the Reformation, my family, by then Scottish “lairds”, or minor nobility, became Presbyterians or Episcopalians. Indeed, two of my family were appointed Moderators (i.e. Presidents) of the General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, one in 1930, the other in 2012.

[2] The Professio Fidei of 1998, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, posits two infallible levels of papal and magisterial teaching and a third, non-infallible, level which must be accepted “with religious submission of mind and will”. Clearly, however, such third level teachings, not being taught infallibly, must be rejected if they contradict any teaching of the two, higher, and infallible, levels of teaching. So much is simply obvious and logical since what is not taught infallibly remains fallible. Yet, because the SSPX endorses this obvious position, John Salza claims that the SSPX rejects the Professio Fidei and, in particular, its third level of magisterial teaching. Once again, he simply fails to understand the SSPX’s position.

[3] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, The Act of Faith, Q. 2, AA. 6, 7 and 8.

[4] The Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, 6th Session, Ch IV, 1547; Blessed Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quadam, 1854, and Quanto conficiamur moerore, 1863.

[5] This, in turn, derives from the principle of “epikeia” (coming from the Greek ἐπιείκεια, “epieíkeia” meaning “equity”) which is a moral and legal principle, originating from Greek philosophy and developed by St Thomas Aquinas, referring to a “reasonable” or equitable interpretation of the law. It allows for departing from, or even breaking, the letter of a law in specific, exceptional cases to follow the higher, intended spirit of that law. It recognises a hierarchy of law whereby adhering to the strict letter of the rule would cause harm or would contradict the spirit of the law or the higher principles of natural law and justice. Aristotle considered epikeia a virtue that corrects legal justice when the law fails to cover a specific, exceptional case due to its generality – Nicomachean Ethics, book V, ch10. Epikeia is a concept well known to English (and thus also American) law and, indeed, now forms a whole branch of the law called “Equity” (albeit, regrettably, since the Protestant Reformation, it is no longer linked to the natural law).

[6] See Depippo, Gregory, “Fr Louis Bouyer on the Liturgical Reform and its Architects”, in New Liturgical Movement (blog), 17 September 2014.

[7] For instance, the remarkably accurate prophecies of “Our Lady of Good Success” of the Ven Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres in Quito Ecuador, 1594-1634, and more recent prophecies such as those of La Salette, of Bl Anna Maria Taigi, of Ven Marie Julie Jahenny (“the Breton stigmatist”), Padre St Pio of Pietrelcina, St Faustina Kowalska, of Sister Sasagawa of Our Lady of Akito and many more, not excluding those found in Holy Scripture.

[8] Pope St Nicholas I the Great, Responsa Nicolai I Papae ad consulta Bulgarorum (866), Fasciculus 4 Fontes historiae religionis Slavicae, 6. These were answers by Pope Nicholas I to 115 questions posed by Khan Boris I of Bulgaria regarding the Christianisation of his nation.

[9] “Robber Council” (or Latrocinium) was the name given to the Second Council of Ephesus held in AD 449, a church council deemed illegitimate due to violence, coercion, and theological error. Convened by Emperor Theodosius II to handle Monophysite disputes, it was dominated by Dioscorus of Alexandria, who reinstated the heretic, Eutyches, and wrongly deposed his orthodox opponents.