OnePeterFive writer and academic theologian Fr. Romano Tommasi has completed a four part study into the question of the canonical mission of the SSPX:
A Four-Part Investigation into the Missio Canonica and the Society of Saint Pius X
Editorial architecture. This series began by a contact this year with someone whom I’ll identify as a prominent spokesman for the SSPX. While I am not a member, SSPX members have found my work on the liturgical reform thought provoking. From a little investigation of SSPX publications prior to my appointment with my aforementioned spokesman for SSPX, I mentioned to him that I was pleased that there had already been engagement in my liturgical work, as for example in their Dutch bi-month bulletin of information in 2014 (Netherlands) and in a 2016 online media article. I don’t bother to mention much older engagement with my ancient article on Mass reform from around 2002-2004. I share with my gracious interlocutor that in a contingent world, where – without a specially infused knowledge – we must discern the truth according to our natural faculties and the virtue of faith, I completely endorse the idea that any given member or associate of SSPX is in entirely good faith, and as such has the same access to the virtue of charity as my institutional Catholicism by law presupposes for me. Yes, that’s antiseptic, but accurate. In laymen’s terms: They are just as good as I am within my own framework. That of course need not be reciprocal, and I don’t need it to be. I’m comfortable accepting the fact that I might deserve criticism, if not pangs of conscience, for any and all cooperation with the unheard of innovation in what the Vatican has promoted officially since the 1960s (I’ll not quibble about the exact month and year that the first signs of the plague manifested themselves).
In our conversation, my interlocutor mused about this whole missio canonica thing. What does it mean to have a canonical mission. We all remember or should know that much ado was made of the convoluted answer during the episcopal ordinations recently, whereby a mandate from the Holy See for the ordination was lacking. The idea is that the pope gives an assignment or a job to every bishop. He shouldn’t be making bishops, unless there’s a real duty that needs someone to perform it for people who otherwise would go without a shepherd.
So, I’ve done only my initial research on whether or not the bishops of SSPX are “jobless” or not according to the long arc or theology, canon law, and history (this is the right hierarchy of authority). I treat the Society as the final test case after two looking at other control groups. Some of these other bishops have a (canonical) mission that is unquestioned. Then, there are bishops whose sacramental episcopacy is completely valid, but whose Roman canonical mission is absent. My method is forensic rather than apologetic. Each installment of this series asks what the evidence permits us to say, and just as importantly, what it does not!
I’ll hope you’ll enjoy the first SSPX comparison to the PNCC (Polish National Catholic Church). I track the developing distinctions among and between orders, mandate, mission, jurisdiction, faculties, communion, office, and territory.
Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash
