There had been considerable debate about the validity of SSPX witnessed marriages. As in the case of hearing confessions, marriages require that a priest have the appropriate faculty. On 27 March 2017 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which had absorbed my old office, the PCED) informed all the bishops of the world that they could give faculties to SSPX priests to witness marriages. You can go to confession to them not just because there are no other priests around. So, SSPX priests can validly absolve sins even when there is no danger of death. Popes can do that sort of thing, whereas other entities such as dicasteries of the Holy See (e.g., the Pontifical Commission “ Ecclesia Dei” (PCED) of old and now CDF, and diocesan bishops) have to use another procedure.
In this case, Francis said that people can be absolved by SSPX priests and that, as they say, is that. It’s better when they do things in a way that make things clear, with all the i’s dotted. However, Popes can do what they want in this regard.
In this case there is no document that I’m aware of that explicitly grants faculties to the priests of the SSPX to hear confessions and to absolve. Those faculties are demonstrable with a document saying that Fr. This is a little odd, because it was not really a formal grant of faculties in the usual and expected way to the priests of the SSPX, as when a bishop grants faculties to a priest to receive sacramental confessions. That provision was extended beyond the “Year of Mercy” in the 2016 Apostolic Letter Misericordia et misera. On 8 December 2015, Francis told the Catholic faithful that for the Holy Year of Mercy they could go to priests of the SSPX for the Sacrament of Penance and that they could be validly absolved. No question.Ĭould it have higher status? Sure. The SSPX is an association of the faithful. 298 §1, which are, for example, when clerics or laity want to strive with common effort to foster a more perfect life, promote public worship, etc. 299 §1 says that by private agreement among themselves, the faithful have the right to constitute associations for the purposes mentioned in can. Hopefully one day they will be set up and recognized formally as a, say, Personal Prelature or some variant.
Their “association of the faithful” does not now have canonical recognition. The SSPX does not have formal canonical status other than they are exercising a canonical right to associate with each other. The SSPX (technically Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Santi Pii X) is a priestly Fraternity or Society of priests. Sheesh.) I would be, will be I hope, honored to have them working alongside me in this diocese or wherever God takes me. (Not that we think clergy should be well educated. Better formed in history, philosophy, liturgy and theology than a great many of garden variety priests I know. They are mostly terrific guys, dedicated, zealous for souls, hard workers and determined priests. I preface this with my observation, from personal experience, of some of the priests of the SSPX. From the onset, however, I warmly urge people who don’t know what they are talking about not to leap in with unhelpful notions about law, theology, etc., and stick to discussing something more fruitful, such as the evils of the designated hitter or of changing the rules about intentional walks. I’ll dig into some issues about the SSPX in a moment. Imagine such a thing! Third, because of the whole COVID lockdown thing, many emails have come in asking a) if it is sinful to go to Masses at still open chapels of the SSPX and b) is it sinful – I am not making this up – to watch their live-streamed services on the internet. Also, because someone wrote to complain that in some of my daily 5 minute podcasts I read paragraphs from a spiritual book by a priest of the SSPX, Fr. Let’s aim for some clarity and charity about the SSPX.įirstly, because of the aforementioned online and thoroughly unedifying dust up. Thus, we are again presented with a concrete demonstration that in many of these dust ups a heck of a lot of people don’t know what they don’t know. Various sections of the addled peanut gallery got involved in the online feud. I looked around and found all manner of strange, useless and confusion-riddled comments about the status of the SSPX, their objectives and holiness, and blah blah. I was informed that some prominent internet wonks were/are having a spat about the SSPX.
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