I want to highlight this:
“The key issue with the lifting of the excommunications is to take all possible measures to prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites. No new bishops and the thing dies.”
I don’t think Benedict wants the “thing” to die” in terms of the spirituality and devotion of people associated with SSPX, but he certainly wants them reintegrated into the Church. But the more I think about it, it seems as if lifting the excommunications is, looking at things politically, a means of actually getting more control over the SSPX, just for the reason – as well as the ordination of priests – that this commenter expresses.
As long as they were completely *out* there were no grounds to object or exert any control. But now that the bishops are back “in” in this very limited sense, their own actions are much more constrained, if they indeed want to be fully reunited.
What do you think?
While we await the L’Osservatore Romano article that is to offer an account of how Pope Benedict XVI arrived at the decision to lift the excommunication imposed on the four priests who received episcopal orders illicitly (c. 1382) from Abp. Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, the materials now coming from the Society of St. Pius X continue, in my opinion, to add to the burden such an article must carry if the remission is to make sense to otherwise well-disposed outside observers.
In the meantime, for the benefit of those who would like to see some responses to the canonical arguments by which the SSPX claims that the 1988 excommunications were never incurred in first place, let me very briefly note the following:
I’m confused by something Ed says and I was wondering if anyone had any clarification.
Ed says at the link above:
“this argument avoids the crucial point that the excommunications which were lifted last week were not automatic excommunications, they were imposed excommunications”
But the decree says:
“the censure of excommunication latae sententiae declared”
I thought a latae sententiae WAS an automatic excommunication and that the declaration of July 1 was merely an acknowledgement that they had themselves incurred the automatic excommunication.
Chris-2-4. Look at c. 1331. You’ll see that some ls excomms can be “declared/imposed” later, with additional consequences. that happened here. best, edp.
So, then are you saying your comment which I quoted above might better read “…the excommunications which were lifted last week were not MERELY automatic excommunications”?
Chris, I believe that’s correct. It’s a formal statement by the Pontiff of something which has already happened.
A closer reading of the decree from last week does indicate that there is more than a mere LS excommunication to be dealt with.
The decree does imply that it is doing two separate things at once.
1) it “remit[s]…the censure of excommunication latae sententiae declared…” and
2) “declare[s] without juridical effects…the decree issued at that time”.
It would seem that the bishops were actually under DOUBLE UNsecret Excommunication… Yikes.
Per the comment “prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites” it seems I recall that just prior to +Lefebvre ordaining the four bishops he had worked out a compromise with JPII’s representative in which the Holy Father would raise a bishop from among the order to replace +Lefebvre. For some reason the Bishop decided to renege on this agreement. The representative? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. So it would seem that at least at that time BXVI was not against the continuation of the Society. Still a lot has happened in the last twenty years, perhaps he no longer feels that way.
I can’t see intergrating the individual SSPX churches into the local diocese though. Can you imagine a SSPX preist taking their marching orders from, oh I don’t know, the Archbishop of Los Angeles?