The SSPX Consecrations: an Eastern Catholic View

Fr Tommasi received his Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome and has taught internationally.

From One Peter Five

By Fr Romano Tommasi, SLD

Considerations on the Reasonableness of SSPX Ordinations, apart from their Juridical Status

Before enumerating the principles governing legitimate resistance, correction, and non-schismatic irregularity, two historical realities must be stated clearly from the perspective of the lessons from the theological authority (albeit a lesser one) of human history:

First, the fourth century Meletian schism at Antioch is worth studying, culminating in unjust legislation from the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople I (AD 381), whose resolution scandalized instead of united factions. This episode demonstrates that prolonged non-communion may arise not from doctrinal deviation, but from confusion regarding jurisdiction, episcopal legitimacy, and overlapping claims of authority. Saints such as Basil and Athanasius found themselves at different times and places in partial or broken communion with Rome or with one another, without heresy, schism, or rebellion of intention. The confusion lay not in faith, but in governance. Saints Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and Jerome, all doctors, rejected the settlement as unjust. Principle: the SSPX issue is a diagnosis of papal confusion wrought by government not by the extraordinary or universal ordinary magisterium.

Second, there is the case of Pope Liberius from the fourth century, as attested by saints and doctors of the Church Athanasius, Hilary, and Jerome as a case a papal betrayal, demonstrating that papal acts—especially under duress—may be weak, ambiguous, or erroneous, and later reversed by subsequent popes, without retroactively condemning those who resisted such weakness in fidelity to received doctrine. The Church herself never canonized Liberius, but has canonized Athanasius. These two realities establish the framework within which the following principles operate. From the realities of history their possibilities can exist today. The Meletian crisis demonstrates that saints of East and West recognized limits to synodal and episcopal settlements when jurisdictional confusion persisted, and that principled non-reception or selective communion did not constitute schism.

Enumerated Principles Governing Papal Error, Resistance, and Irregular Communion

Principle 1 – A Pope May Err in Non-Definitive Acts

Principle (Locus Theologicus or authority; Scholastics and Canonists, Acts of Council of Basel 1431-1437): A Roman Pontiff may err outside the conditions of infallibility.

Modes of error include:
(a) Heresy (material or formal)
(b) Immorality
(c) Violation of canon law
(d) Acts threatening the unity or status of the Church (status ecclesiae)

Circumstances reinforcing applicability:

• Admitted by Juan de Torquemada (Turrecremata), OP
• Received in the canonical tradition (Gratian, post-Gratian glosses)
• Presupposed by conciliar theology (Constance, Basel)

Evaluation: SSPX has formally and materially avoided this venue. As such, it cannot be labelled extremist thus.

Principle 2 – Heresy Results in Loss of Office ipso facto

Principle (Locus Theologicus: Scholastics and Canonists, Acta of Council of Basel 1431-1437):
If a pope falls into heresy, he loses office automatically, without juridical sentence.

Circumstances:

• Affirmed by Juan de Torquemada, OP, at the Council of Basel and as Cardinal post, whose trajectory is summarized by Doctor of the Church Robert Bellarmine
• Rooted in patristic consensus
• Presupposed by medieval canonists
• Later reaffirmed implicitly by theological tradition

Evaluation: SSPX has formally and materially avoided this venue. As such, it cannot be labelled extremist thus.

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Principle 3 – Admonition by Council Is Legitimate for Grave Violations

Principle:
If a pope violates divine, natural, or just ecclesiastical law, he may be admonished by the Church, especially through a council.

Circumstances:

• Basel-era theology used for the heresy-permitting Pope Honorius at Constantinople III (680-1)
• Conciliar interventions understood as medicinal, not revolutionary at orthodox Basel 1431-7
• Aimed at restoration, not destruction, of authority

Evaluation: SSPX has formally and materially avoided this venue. As such, it cannot be labelled extremist thus.

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Principle 4 – In Extreme Cases, a Pope May Be Ignored or Resisted

Principle (Locus Theologicus: Scholastics and Canonists and human reason):
When papal commands contradict divine law, natural law, or the good of the Church, they may be ignored without schism.

Evaluation:

• Applied by Athanasius under Liberius (explained below)
• Reaffirmed in the most conservative canonists after Gratian and later scholastic theology (commonly these two former have been discussed without effect for decades)

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Principle 5 – Deposition Is Possible When Unity Is Gravely Threatened

Principle:
If a pope gravely threatens the unity of the Church (status ecclesiae), deposition by a council is possible.

Circumstances:

• John de Torquemada OP's moderated papal absolutism
• Basel conciliar theory
• Strictly limited, extraordinary measure

Principle 6 – Intention Is Required for Schism (1983 Code)

Principle (Locus Theologicus: Sacred Canons invested with extrinsic authority):
Schism requires intentional refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or communion with the Church.

Circumstances:

• Codified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law
• Basis for Benedict XVI’s removal of SSPX excommunications
• Presupposes subjective intention, not merely objective irregularity

Evaluation: Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, schism is a formal canonical delict requiring not only objective separation but demonstrable intentionality—namely, a willful refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with those subject to him (c. 751). This juridical requirement of intent was decisive in Pope Benedict XVI’s removal of the excommunications incurred in 1988, since the absence of a proven schismatic will precluded the persistence of the delict as such. It follows that a public statement of intention explicitly affirming adherence to the Roman Pontiff and rejection of schism, provided it does not itself violate the Code, suffices to negate schismatic formality, even if the underlying act or situation remains canonically irregular. Such an act may therefore be non-schismatic without thereby constituting a juridically regular act of ecclesial communion.

Principle 7 – Rights Once Granted Require Theological Justification for Suppression

Principle (Locus Theologicus: Tradition, CIC + CCEO, and Human Reason):
A right publicly granted—especially one rooted in apostolic tradition—cannot be suppressed without explanation consistent with theology and justice.

Circumstances:

• Summorum Pontificum  recognized the Tridentine liturgy as never abrogated
• Traditionis Custodes suppressed usage without theological explanation
• The right of clerics and faithful was not juridically rescinded in principle

Evaluation: When a right previously articulated with explicit juridical reasoning is later restricted or suppressed or ignored by a factual legislative act that neither engages nor refutes that reasoning nor names or unnames said right, the underlying juridical rationale remains operative for interpretation and conscientious action, especially where penal or restrictive norms are involved.

Principle 8 – State of Emergency May Persist under Objective Disorder

Principle (Locus Theologicus: Gratian’s canonical sources as intrinsically authoritative; CIC; Human History – Great/Western Schism):
A state of emergency may reasonably be claimed when ordinary canonical remedies are unavailable.

Circumstances:

• Dubia submitted without response (e.g., Cardinal Burke & co.) along with aggravating circumstances
• Cardina Zen publicly protesting lack of access to the pope in order to discuss the dangers of the Communist patriotic putatively Roman Catholic church in China
• Bishops removed without due process (e.g., Tyler, Texas)
• Investigations (e.g., Franciscans of the Immaculate) without canonical transparency based upon attachment to a liturgical locus theologicus as a right.

Evaluation: When authoritative ambiguity touching faith, morals, or sacramental discipline persists, and ordinary channels fail to resolve it, public, non-defiant clarification-seeking is legitimate and does not constitute disobedience or schism, even when it exposes unresolved tensions at the highest level of governance. A further corroborating principle may be drawn from the public submission of dubia to the Roman Pontiff, most notably under Cardinal Burke. The dubia presupposed a condition of unresolved doctrinal and pastoral ambiguity sufficiently grave to justify extraordinary, public recourse beyond ordinary consultative channels, while explicitly affirming papal authority and ecclesial communion, a principled action not used since the Council of Basel 1431-1437. Papal legitimacy was never denied, nor were their authors charged with disobedience or schism. This establishes a precedent within the Church’s own recent praxis: that a persisting state of uncertainty at the level of magisterial interpretation may warrant exceptional measures oriented toward clarification and safeguarding of the faithful. If such measures are admissible at the highest levels of the hierarchy, it follows a fortiori that analogous reasoning may inform prudential judgments at lower levels, so long as these acts neither deny papal authority nor erect parallel structures of governance.

Circumstantial support for the reasonableness of emergency: prudence may be found in the public testimony of senior cardinals who have stated their inability to obtain an audience with the Roman Pontiff on matters touching foundational principles of Catholic doctrine and moral teaching, including the Church’s perennial condemnation of Communism. Such testimony does not impugn papal authority, but it does indicate a functional obstruction of ordinary channels of hierarchical recourse. When even those charged with advising and assisting the Supreme Pontiff attest to the inaccessibility of clarification on settled principles, the presumption that normal governance mechanisms are operative is weakened. In such conditions, appeals to extraordinary prudence oriented toward safeguarding the faith of the faithful cannot be dismissed as intrinsically illegitimate.

Further circumstantial support may be drawn from the apostolic visitation and subsequent restructuring of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Whatever the merits of the concerns raised, the intervention was widely perceived as proceeding through administrative measures that suspended constitutions and restricted liturgical practice without a clearly articulated judicial process or specification of canonical delicts. The case is not singular and has had a chilling effect well beyond the institute itself. Irregular groups, including the Society of St. Pius X, have reasonably inferred from this precedent that reconciliation absent stable juridical guarantees may expose them to sweeping disciplinary action without recourse. This perception—whether fully accurate or not—contributes materially to the present climate of distrust and informs claims that ordinary canonical mechanisms are insufficiently reliable.

Principle 9 – Comparative Ecclesial Recognition Confirms Lesser Irregularities

Principle (Locus Theologicus of Human Reason; argumentation = a fortiori)
If ecclesial bodies with greater objective irregularities are recognized, those with lesser ones cannot be treated more harshly.

Circumstances:

• Chinese Patriotic Church recognized despite dual allegiances
• Assyrian Church of the East granted sacramental access (2001 Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East)
• SSPX claims less autonomy and professes full Catholic doctrine
• The Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches allows Orthodox godparents

The law of the Church itself already admits, for grave pastoral reasons, forms of participation in sacramental life that fall short of full canonical regularity. Thus, the CCEO explicitly permits Eastern Orthodox—and in certain cases Oriental Orthodox—Christians to serve as godparents, provided that the Catholic faith of the sacrament is safeguarded. This provision does not presuppose full ecclesial communion, nor does it regularize the ecclesial status of those communities; rather, it recognizes that baptismal faith, sacramental intention, and moral suitability can suffice for limited ecclesial functions without resolving deeper juridical ruptures. A fortiori, where baptized Catholics profess full doctrinal adherence, sacramental theology identical to that of the Church, and explicit submission in principle to the Roman Pontiff—however irregular their canonical situation—their categorical exclusion from analogous roles cannot be argued as self-evident from first principles. The precedent does not prove the case, but it establishes that the Church already operates with graded categories of communion and participation that resist absolutist interpretations.

A further and even stronger precedent is provided by the Holy See’s recognition of sacramental sharing with the Assyrian Church of the East. In official magisterial and disciplinary documents, members of that Church are admitted—without individual doctrinal examination—to the reception of Catholic sacraments in cases of pastoral necessity, with the sole exception of Holy Orders. This recognition presupposes neither full ecclesial communion nor canonical regularity, but rests instead on the objective validity of sacramental theology, apostolic succession, and the intention of the minister. A fortiori, where Catholic priests and faithful profess the Catholic faith integrally, celebrate according to the 1962 missal (which rite exists within the approved structures of today’s church liturgically though not canonically), and acknowledge the Roman Pontiff in principle—despite the existence of unresolved canonical irregularities—their exclusion from analogous sacramental access cannot be deduced as a necessary consequence of Church law or sacramental theology. As before, the precedent does not resolve the SSPX’s juridical status, but it demonstrates that the Church already tolerates, for the sake of souls, sacramental participation across situations of imperfect or irregular communion that are objectively more distant than the one under consideration.

Principle 10 – Saints May Arise from Objectively Irregular Jurisdictions (St. Vincent Ferrer)

Principle (Locus Theologicus: liturgical-juridical; Acts of Saints as the Sacred Congregation of Rites foundation for a magisterial act of canonization):
Objective illegitimacy of jurisdiction does not preclude sanctity or ecclesial fruitfulness.

Circumstances:

• St. Vincent Ferrer adhered to an antipope
• Canonized despite jurisdictional error
• SSPX claims less separation than Ferrer’s context and does not seek the deposition of a pope who has allegedly lost claims to his office

Evaluation: The canonization of Vincent Ferrer did not ratify the Avignon obedience, but it did demonstrate that sanctity, sacramental efficacy, and ecclesial service can subsist for a time within objectively disordered structures — a fact the Church herself later judged with mercy rather than anathema. A fortiori, a body that claims neither papal authority nor a parallel ecclesial identity, but professes principled submission to the Roman See while asserting a limited and crisis-conditioned irregularity, occupies a categorically lesser and more intelligible anomaly. This historical datum does not justify such an anomaly as normative, but it does establish the limits of condemnation and forecloses simplistic assertions that every sustained irregularity constitutes schism in the strict sense.

Principle 11 – Papal Reversal upon Review of Precedent (Pope St. Victor I)

Principle (Locus Theologicus of Human History)

A pope may reverse his own disciplinary or juridical decisions upon recognizing that earlier Roman or apostolic precedent contradicts his initial judgment, without loss of authority or ecclesial rupture. This pattern is already evident in the second century: as Eusebius records, Pope Victor I reversed his disciplinary stance in the Paschal controversy after reviewing earlier Roman and apostolic precedent, demonstrating that papal acts at the level of governance may be corrected by appeal to tradition without undermining papal authority or ecclesial unity.

Primary source:
Ecclesiastical History, Book V, chs. 23–25 (Paschal controversy)

Circumstances strengthening applicability:

• Pope Victor I initially moved toward excommunication of the Quartodecimans
• Other bishops (notably Irenaeus) appealed to prior Roman and apostolic custom
• Victor withdrew or softened his position after reviewing precedent
• Authority was preserved; unity restored

Theological-juridical significance:

• Papal governance is corrigible at the disciplinary level
• Appeal to tradition is a legitimate mechanism of correction
• Resistance aimed at preserving received norms may later be vindicated

Evaluation: SSPX currently cannot be regularized because of a suppression of the recognition that a locus theologicus (the Roman rite), as it has historically existed for centuries and has been recognized explicitly by Quo Primum and Summorum Pontificum, is no longer dignified as a rite. The ecclesial societies that celebrate using a legally-non-existent form of Mass, though valid and licit within the full communion of the Church, have no status as priests of the Roman rite in their pastoral celebration of the sacraments but only by their canonical incardination. SSPX priests impossibly attempt to be reconnected or absorbed into a body who recognizes no rite of St. Pius V and which has erased the canonical standing of Tridentine Mass, while yet the right to celebrate it remains ostensibly maintained by priests subjection to the Code of Canon Law (1983).

The Principle 12 – Papal Suppression of Religious Orders (and a fortiori Societies of Apostolic Life) does not per se signify their functioning vagi clergy to be schismatic but can only do so by a declaration (secundum quid)

The Jesuit Suppression: the Principle Established

The historical fact (briefly)

• In 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits (Dominus ac Redemptor).
• The suppression was driven overwhelmingly by political pressure from Bourbon courts (France, Spain, Portugal).
• Catherine the Great refused to promulgate the brief in Russia.
• As a result, the Society of Jesus continued to exist legally and publicly in Russian territories with papal knowledge.

Crucially:

• Rome did not declare those Jesuits schismatic
• Rome did not deny the validity of their ministries
• Rome later fully restored the Society, implicitly acknowledging that the suppression was contingent, political, and corrigible

From the Jesuit case, Catholic history and the implications of statements in administrative documents of papal reversal admit this principle: When papal administrative acts are demonstrably coerced by external political forces, their moral and ecclesial force may be attenuated, limited, or suspended without constituting schism or rebellion. This is not Protestantism. It is Roman Catholic historical realism.

Rome itself tolerated this suspension of obedience because the coercive origin was obvious. Catherine the Great matters, for she:

• Was not Catholic
• Was not obedient to Rome
• Was politically dominant
• Acted to protect a Catholic religious order for reasons of state

Yet Rome:

• Did not anathematize
• Did not demand heroic martyr-obedience
• Did not insist the Jesuits dissolve themselves

Rome implicitly recognized that papal acts can be conditioned by raw power, not pure pastoral or doctrinal judgment.

Evaluation: If the Church historically recognized that the suppression of the Jesuits was compromised by political coercion from secular sovereigns, then analogous prudential caution applies when ecclesial suppressions arise chiefly from moral pressure exerted by episcopal blocs rather than from doctrinal necessity.

Unified Evaluation

Taken together, these principles establish a coherent Catholic framework in which papal authority is real, binding, and divinely instituted, yet not absolute in a positivist sense. History provides reasonable foundations – theologized according to the only method endorsed according to the Code of Canon Law 1984 (viz., the Thomistic method) – for incorporating repeatedly popes erring, that such errors may be resisted without schism, that later popes may reverse earlier acts, and that fidelity to received tradition has often been vindicated after the fact. Within this framework, the position of the Society of St. Pius X—characterized by professed doctrinal fidelity to the extraordinary and Universal Ordinary Magisterium, together with their explicit denial of schismatic intent, appeal to tradition (of which liturgy is locus theologicus), and recourse to necessity—falls well within the range of historically tolerated, canonically intelligible, and theologically defensible irregularity.

Nothing in the foregoing establishes the SSPX as a normative model for ecclesial life; it establishes only that their present posture falls within historically intelligible and tolerated irregularity. I do not determine the objective merits of their case but only their completely reasonable stance about facts with their consequences in today’s climate and lived ecclesial reality .

Accordingly, the Holy See’s past decisions in official decrees and rescripts to (1) recognize fulfillment of Sunday obligation at SSPX Masses and (2) to grant and indefinitely extend jurisdiction for confessions are not anomalies but consistent applications of Catholic juridical and theological principles already long present in the Church’s own tradition. This conclusion neither justifies rebellion nor denies authority; rather, it affirms that the Church has always possessed internal mechanisms for correction, patience, and eventual reconciliation, grounded not in ideology, but in coherence.

The burden, administratively, on today’s ordinary magisterium in the person of Pope Leo XIV, currently lies in presenting a coherent foundation upon which an act of trusting obedience can be renewed (analogous to an act of faith by use of intellect and will toward authority), but with the explicit provisions respected in Donum veritatis that the ordinary magisterium reverses itself on occasion. Such error, given the quantity and duration of ordinary magisterial statements over the centuries, is notable.

Despite this, the magisterium itself reasonably demands a hermeneutic of continuity whereby the incoherence of the magisterium must be a  necessary conclusion drawn only after docility, study, and prayer have been attempted. Given the Francis papacy’s refusal to manifest doctrinal clarity, even when the highest authorities in the Church have dutifully begged for it, and given the current papacy’s laudatory remarks of its whole and mentioned parts of the same Francis papacy, the SSPX is reasonable for concluding that the present is a continuation of the recent past. Perhaps, to everyone’s chagrin, best symbolized by a lack of coherence in the Pachamama episode. There is a nonchalance displayed by the papal office dismissing this level of scandal before the faithful, given the appearances of idolatry (even if the greatest precisions are observed to avoid imputation of heresy as with Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae, q. 12, a. 1). Introducing the universal Church to a dubious act of cult is insufficiently acknowledged as a fact by us within who are trained to know better.

A small group of baptized Roman Catholics (even if treated sometimes as if they lack Church membership) is deeply troubled by gradual semantic drift of words from their proper meanings by inventive jargon (as in recent magisterium) represents a reasonable suspicion of a creep toward apostasy. It also bothers the consciences of churchmen trained in canon law and theology who recognize that the clerical lack of palpable resistance to this jargon can be best explained by our administrative structures that massively de-incentivize and punish fidelity to abstract propositions of faith (not subject to revision), whenever they conflict with power dynamics surrounding the supreme office. If we resist, we will pay the supreme penalty. 

The history of the Church reasonably has prepared us to confront this conflict of conscience within ourselves today. The SSPX consecrations are a good occasion to remind ourselves of what has already been lost before there is more incoherence towards the same unintelligibility, often only nominally in touch with the ordinary magisterium of first nineteen-hundred years. Ab esse ad posse valet illatio. Explicit.

Pictured: The iconostasis of an Eastern Catholic Church