I am familiar with the lettter and organisation Eccelsia Dei, Pope Francis recently having done away with this organisation.
Note that there have been various significant developments in the decades since the Ecclesia Dei letter.
Approx 20 years ago, the then head of Ecclesia Dei, Cardinal Dario Castrillion Hoyos, said in an interview that the SSPX "are not schismatic" multiple times and so it is disappointing that this calumny continues.
The Church authorities have never formally declared the SSPX to be in schism, because they are not. It is true the SSPX Bishops were punished (since rescinded) for being consecrated without a mandate, but they have never set up a separate organisation or authority, nor failed to acknowledge the Pope.
In my opinion, Pope Francis fairness towards the SSPX (for example, clarifying their ability to conduct weddings and hear confessions), has been one of the few highlights of his Pontificate. He was also kind towards them when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
The developments over the past 35 years have been demonstrations of great mercy on the part of the Church. There has been no corresponding repentance shown by the leaders of the SSPX.
You certainly cannot mean that the words of Pope St. John Paul II in Ecclesia Dei are irrelevant because they are several decades old? Here they are, from paragraphs 1-4:
"With great affliction the Church has learned of the unlawful episcopal ordination conferred on 30 June last by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which has frustrated all the efforts made during the previous years to ensure the full communion with the Church of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X..."
"In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act."
"The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition."
Hi Lucy,
I am familiar with the lettter and organisation Eccelsia Dei, Pope Francis recently having done away with this organisation.
Note that there have been various significant developments in the decades since the Ecclesia Dei letter.
Approx 20 years ago, the then head of Ecclesia Dei, Cardinal Dario Castrillion Hoyos, said in an interview that the SSPX "are not schismatic" multiple times and so it is disappointing that this calumny continues.
The Church authorities have never formally declared the SSPX to be in schism, because they are not. It is true the SSPX Bishops were punished (since rescinded) for being consecrated without a mandate, but they have never set up a separate organisation or authority, nor failed to acknowledge the Pope.
In my opinion, Pope Francis fairness towards the SSPX (for example, clarifying their ability to conduct weddings and hear confessions), has been one of the few highlights of his Pontificate. He was also kind towards them when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
The developments over the past 35 years have been demonstrations of great mercy on the part of the Church. There has been no corresponding repentance shown by the leaders of the SSPX.
You certainly cannot mean that the words of Pope St. John Paul II in Ecclesia Dei are irrelevant because they are several decades old? Here they are, from paragraphs 1-4:
"With great affliction the Church has learned of the unlawful episcopal ordination conferred on 30 June last by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which has frustrated all the efforts made during the previous years to ensure the full communion with the Church of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X..."
"In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act."
"The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition."