The Unsolvable Pendulum Problem of the Society of St. Pius X

Forever torn between two mutually exclusive ideas…

The Unsolvable Pendulum Problem of the Society of St. Pius X

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX or FSSPX), founded by Abp. Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, is once again in the news, this time on account of its Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome last week (see a few official photos here).

Some SSPXers are celebrating, whereas others are expressing concern. The reason for the inconsistent reactions to the same development is that some see it as Rome accepting the SSPX as Catholic and recognizing the rights of ‘Tradition’ (a Lefebvrist euphemism for what is simply the Catholic Faith); whereas others see it as a dangerous luring of the Lefebvrist leadership into the ecumenical zoo presided over by Modernist Rome.

Interestingly enough, both sides can (and often do) invoke the example of Abp. Lefebvre in support of their respective position, for the Society’s founder himself sometimes sided with more conciliatory voices and sometimes with hardliners, depending on what seemed right to him at any given moment.

But, why is there this tension between a conciliatory approach and a more hard-line attitude among SSPX adherents in the first place? Why is there a wing that favors reconciliation with Rome and one that is hostile to such an idea? (Here we must remember that although a number of hardliners have left the SSPX since 2012 and loosely created their own groups, such as the SSPX-Marian Corps, the SSPX-Resistance, and the SSPX-Strict Observance, there are still hardliners in the official SSPX that chose not to leave.)

The reason for these different currents and the tension between them is that the SSPX’s theological position is inherently contradictory; wherefore those who hold it are forever living positioned between the two poles of:

(a) uncompromising adherence to the Catholic religion as known and taught before Vatican II; and

(b) loyal submission to the present-day hierarchy (which, according to the SSPX, is the legitimate hierarchy but it has abandoned the pre-Vatican II Faith the SSPX sees itself as upholding)

In the true Roman Catholic religion, submission to the Pope and one’s own local bishop in communion with the Holy See is what guarantees adherence to the true Catholic Faith. That is precisely the reason why the Lord Jesus set up His Church in a hierarchical manner:

To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor.

(Pope Leo XIII, Letter Epistola Tua)

The idea that the Catholic hierarchy could defect while remaining united to the Pope is a blasphemous impossibility, for it is precisely communion with the Pope that guarantees orthodoxy:

Indeed one simple way to keep men professing Catholic truth is to maintain their communion with and obedience to the Roman Pontiff. For it is impossible for a man ever to reject any portion of the Catholic faith without abandoning the authority of the Roman Church. In this authority, the unalterable teaching office of this faith lives on. It was set up by the divine Redeemer and, consequently, the tradition from the Apostles has always been preserved. So it has been a common characteristic both of the ancient heretics and of the more recent Protestants — whose disunity in all their other tenets is so great — to attack the authority of the Apostolic See. But never at any time were they able by any artifice or exertion to make this See tolerate even a single one of their errors.

(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, nn. 16-17)

Union with the Roman See of Peter is to [St. Jerome] always the public criterion of a Catholic. “I acknowledge everyone who is united with the See of Peter” (Ep. xvi., ad Damasum, n. 2). And for a like reason St. Augustine publicly attests that, “the primacy of the Apostolic chair always existed in the Roman Church” (Ep. xliii., n. 7); and he denies that anyone who dissents from the Roman faith can be a Catholic. “You are not to be looked upon as holding the true Catholic faith if you do not teach that the faith of Rome is to be held” (Sermo cxx., n. 13). So, too, St. Cyprian: “To be in communion with Cornelius is to be in communion with the Catholic Church” (Ep. Iv., n. 1). In the same way Maximus the Abbot teaches that obedience to the Roman Pontiff is the proof of the true faith and of legitimate communion. Therefore if a man does not want to be, or to be called, a heretic, let him not strive to please this or that man…but let him hasten before all things to be in communion with the Roman See. If he be in communion with it, he should be acknowledged by all and everywhere as faithful and orthodox. He speaks in vain who tries to persuade me of the orthodoxy of those who, like himself, refuse obedience to his Holiness the Pope of the most holy Church of Rome: that is to the Apostolic See.”

(Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 13)

For the first and greatest criterion of the faith, the ultimate and unassailable test of orthodoxy is obedience to the teaching authority of the Church, which is ever living and infallible, since she was established by Christ to be the columna et firmamentum veritatis, “the pillar and support of truth” (1 Tim 3:15).

(Pope St. Pius X, Address Con Vera Soddisfazione, May 10, 1909)

Although any (and almost every) diocese in the world could conceivably fall from the true Faith, abandon communion with the Apostolic See, and become apostate, there is one diocese which is guaranteed by God Himself never to fall, and that is the see of Rome, the Holy See: “…no particular part of the Church is indefectibly Apostolic, save the see of Peter, which is universally known by way of eminence as the Apostolic See”, notes Fr. E. Sylvester Berry (The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1927], p. 141; italics removed).

In other words, the indefectibility of the Church is guaranteed precisely by the Pope, who is specially assisted by God in this matter:

Mother Church, Catholic, Roman, she who has remained faithful to the constitution received from her Divine Founder, and who even today stands firmly on the solid rock on which He willed to found her, possesses in the primacy of Peter and of his legitimate successors, the assurance, guaranteed by Divine promises, of maintaining and transmitting whole and inviolate, through centuries and tens of centuries, even to the end of time, the whole body of truth and grace contained in the redemptive mission of Christ.

… To try to create an opposition between Christ as head of the Church and His vicar, to see in the affirmation of one the negation of the other, means distorting the clearest and most luminous pages of the Gospel. It means closing one’s eyes to the most ancient and venerable testimonies of tradition, and depriving Christendom of that precious heritage, the correct knowledge and appreciation of which, at the moment known only to God and by the light of grace which He alone gives, can instill into the separated brethren the longing to return to their Father’s house, and the efficacious will to come back to it.

(Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the Consistory, June 2, 1944; translation from The Catholic Mind, vol. 42 [July, 1944], pp. 389-391.)

Note well: It is by means of “the primacy of Peter and of his legitimate [!] successors” — the Papacy — that God guarantees the indefectibility of the Church. It is not by means of bishops, priests, saints, theologians, journalists, bloggers, or YouTubers, be they ever so holy or erudite. After all, Christ established His Church, the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15) so that “henceforth we be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men…” (Eph 4:14).

In other words, there will never be a time in which the magisterium of a true Roman Catholic Pope (and the bishops in communion with him) must be set aside in favor of the writings or ideas of an Archbishop Lefebvre, a Padre Pio, a Fr. Matthias Gaudron, a Peter or Michael Dimond, a Michael Davies, or a Peter Kwasniewski, for example (cf. 1 Cor 1:12-13).

As Pope Pius XII once made clear in an address to cardinals:

As for the laity, it is clear that they can be invited by legitimate teachers and accepted as helpers in the defense of the faith. It is enough to call to mind the thousands of men and women engaged in catechetical work, and other types of lay apostolate, all of which are highly praiseworthy and can be strenuously promoted. But all these lay apostles must be, and remain, under the authority, leadership, and watchfulness of those who by divine institution are set up as teachers of Christ’s Church. In matters involving the salvation of souls, there is no teaching authority in the Church not subject to this authority and vigilance.

(Pope Pius XII, Allocution Si Diligis, May 31, 1954; underlining added.)

If, therefore, it is abundantly clear (as it is today) that what passes itself off as the papal magisterium, all the while teaching the foulest and most obvious errors and blasphemies which the pre-Vatican II Faith requires a Catholic to reject, then it is the Catholic Faith — not personal pride or vanity — that obliges us to identify such a ‘Pope’ for what he truly is: a charlatan, a pretender, a false pope!

Therefore: The scenario envisioned by the Society of St. Pius X — in which the Holy See has defected and must return to the Faith that is being safeguarded in the meantime by the Lefebvrist Society — is absurd, blasphemous, and heretical. In fact, as we have seen, the very pre-Vatican II Faith of which the SSPX considers itself to be the extraordinary guardian, precludes such a situation. (For that reason, in a reply to Fr. Paul Morrison a few years back, we characterized the SSPX position as “theological Absurdistan”.)

Some people think that genuine submission to the Pope is manifested when hundreds of clergy process into St. Peter’s Basilica, pray for the Pope, and offer Holy Mass on the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter; or when these same clerics declare their “unwavering attachment to the Apostolic See, to the Pope successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ….” But while such things are noble and important, they are not that in which the essence of submission to the Pope consists. Rather, Pope Pius IX clarified:

What good is it to proclaim aloud the dogma of the supremacy of St. Peter and his successors? What good is it to repeat over and over declarations of faith in the Catholic Church and of obedience to the Apostolic See when actions give the lie to these fine words? Moreover, is not rebellion rendered all the more inexcusable by the fact that obedience is recognized as a duty? Again, does not the authority of the Holy See extend, as a sanction, to the measures which We have been obliged to take, or is it enough to be in communion of faith with this See without adding the submission of obedience, — a thing which cannot be maintained without damaging the Catholic Faith?

…In fact, Venerable Brothers and beloved Sons, it is a question of recognizing the power (of this See), even over your churches, not merely in what pertains to faith, but also in what concerns discipline. He who would deny this is a heretic; he who recognizes this and obstinately refuses to obey is worthy of anathema.

(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quae in Patriarchatu [Sept. 1, 1876], nn. 23-24; in Acta Sanctae Sedis X [1877], pp. 3-37; English taken from Papal Teachings: The Church, nn. 433-434.)

In the true Roman Catholic religion, both components are necessary: adherence to the true Faith and submission to the Apostolic See, which alone guarantees the purity of the Faith. The great Lefebvrist error is to hold that the two could ever be at variance; and that error makes any solution impossible (within that theological framework).

Because the Society’s position is founded on two irreconcilable ideas, there is tension between them, and this tension generates a pendulum, so to speak, which will at times swing from one side to the other. The closer the pendulum is to one extreme, the farther it will necessarily be from the other. Thus, the more an SSPXer seeks attachment to the faithless hierarchy of Modernist Rome, the farther he removes himself from the true Catholic Faith; and the closer he gets to the true Faith, the farther he will remove himself from the Modernists currently occupying the Vatican structures.

It is a great, undeserved grace to see these things clearly, and we should certainly sympathize with all those SSPX adherents who hold their dangerous and false position in good faith as part of a sincere effort to be good and pious Catholics. After all, the situation since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958 has been far from easy, and each one of us has come to understand these things little by little and only with the help of Almighty God. “Lord, that I may see” (Lk 18:41).

Over the years, a number of lay SSPXers have come to recognize the impossibility of their position, and sometimes even their clergy do. Recently, Fr. Reid Hennick left the Lefebvrists and became a sedevacantist. But, alas, when people realize it is time to make up their minds between adherence to the immemorial Catholic religion or submission to the Modernists posing as the Catholic hierarchy, not all come down on the side of the former. This past Aug. 11, the Swiss district of the SSPX announced that Fr. Severin Zahner is leaving the Society to work “within an official structure” of the Conciliar Church. Fr. Firmin Udressy, once superior of the German district, left the SSPX last year for the Conciliar religion. We truly live in a lacrimarum valle (valley of tears).

With all of the above information, we can see that the Society of St. Pius X has trapped itself in between two ideas that are impossible to reconcile because they are mutually exclusive. It has thus condemned itself be moving perpetually between them, and it will never find rest because no matter over which side the pendulum currently hovers, it cannot remain there because the one side — adherence to the pre-Vatican II Faith — demands, as part of this very Faith, submission to the lawful hierarchy. And yet, the other side — submission to what they recognize as the true hierarchy — requires abandonment of that Faith.

Game over, SSPX. Your goose is cooked. The only way out of this mess is Sedevacantism (see video here), with all its difficulties and unanswered questions.

Only a vacant Chair of St. Peter can explain what we have seen coming from Rome since the death of Pope Pius XII.

Image source: composite with elements from Shutterstock (pelfophoto and PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek) and fsspx.es
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