Condemnation of SSPX consecrations uses the reasoning of the Pharisees

Like the Pharisees, SSPX critics painstakingly uphold procedural law at the expense of the law’s underlying purpose, the salvation of souls.

(LifeSiteNews) – The condemnation of the SSPX consecrations is a Pharisaical error. This point might be inflammatory, but I want to make clear that I think most practicing Catholics who condemn the consecrations love Christ and totally desire to uphold the faith.

I am not saying that they, as people, are like the Pharisees, only that their position unwittingly endorses the kind of reasoning used by the Pharisees. One of the clearest recurring faults of the Pharisees was that they painstakingly upheld ceremonial law — comparable to today’s procedural law — while neglecting the law’s underlying purpose and principles. The SSPX is now condemned by the Vatican, most “mainstream” Catholics, and even many “traditional” Catholics because they consecrated bishops without a papal mandate in violation of Church procedural law (and a recent one at that).

But few of these people acknowledge that canon law, in accordance with God’s justice, allows for exceptional violations of its own procedural law in case the letter of the law ever happens to interfere with its underlying goal, primarily the salvation of souls. Canon 1323 states that “A person is not liable to any canonical penalty if they violated a law or precept because they acted under grave fear (even if only relative), or out of necessity or grave inconvenience, unless the act is intrinsically evil or tends to be harmful to souls.”

I wonder how many of these Catholics have made a meaningful effort to understand why the SSPX performed the episcopal consecrations without papal mandate. The question we need to ask is: Did the SSPX violate procedural law in order to uphold the ultimate purpose of the Church, the salvation of souls? If so, they acted in a clear state of necessity.

They do not need to have acted on assumption of a threat to the souls of all Catholics for a state of necessity to apply; even a threat to the souls of some Catholics is sufficient. In fact, Christ the Good Shepherd would never have allowed a procedural or ceremonial law to get in the way of the salvation of even one soul. To claim that attempting to save souls does not matter so long as procedural law was violated is to reject the entire purpose of the law, and is a clear, classic example of Pharisaical thinking.

The goals of the SSPX episcopal consecrations To understand why the SSPX performed the episcopal consecrations, we must first examine the practical effects of these consecrations. SSPX bishops first guarantee that priests will be ordained who offer the Traditional Latin Mass as a matter of principle and cannot be wrongly pressured into saying the Novus Ordo instead (see the permanent, total authorization of the TLM granted by Quo Primum, which warned that whoever should dare to contradict it would “incur the wrath of Almighty God”). However, the SSPX would argue that as important as this is, its guarantee of the continuation of the TLM is not its primary distinction.

What sets the SSPX apart from other traditional priestly societies is that it publicly upholds the fullness of the Catholic faith by clearly rejecting the errors of the Second Vatican Council documents. While the SSPX has clarified that they can accept most of the documents of Vatican II as consistent with magisterial teaching, it insists that the documents contain errors that cannot be reconciled with the perennial magisterium. Some of these errors are ambiguously phrased, and some are quite clear.

“What errors?” you may be asking. Perhaps the clearest errors are contained in Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian religions.

This contains several flat-out false claims about non-Christian religions, including the following: - “ ... in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry.” No. Hindus do not contemplate or do they express “the” divine mystery, which can only have