The SSPX Crisis is not an Abstraction

Bear 

@aquinasbear

The SSPX Crisis is not an Abstraction

I have tried to stay out of the tribal warfare surrounding the SSPX because I do not belong to anyone’s faction. I just want to be left alone to practice the orthodox Faith.

I am a convert, but I am not an uninformed one. Before entering the Catholic Church, I studied Catholic theology, Church history, papal authority, canon law, Vatican II, Tradition, and the Magisterium. I read the Summa cover to cover. I have continued studying ever since.

I understand why the consecration of bishops without a papal mandate is treated as an extraordinarily grave canonical act. I also understand why the SSPX believes that a state of necessity exists. Both are true.

What I cannot ignore is the glaring difference between the severity shown toward the SSPX and the patience Rome repeatedly extends elsewhere.

Rome negotiates in secret with a Chinese government that intrudes into the appointment of bishops. It tolerates years of open doctrinal pressure from the German Church over sexual morality, ordained ministry, ecclesiology, and other matters touching the deposit of faith.

The Church now permits pastoral blessings of same-sex couples while insisting that doctrine has not changed. We are repeatedly told that the synodal Church must listen, accompany, dialogue, build bridges, and seek fraternity with Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, nonbelievers, and nearly everyone else. The Church puts women who support abortion into key roles in the curia. The Church considers it "wrong" to deny Communion to a politician who openly advocates for multiple heresies.

Yet Catholics who adhere to Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the perennial Magisterium are treated as though they are the one group beyond patience, dialogue, accompaniment, or pastoral mercy. This contradiction is difficult to ignore.

For me, however, this is not merely an argument about Vatican II, canon law, obedience, schism, or the internal politics of the Church.

I am largely homebound. I have never attended an SSPX chapel, but SSPX priests have been among the only priests willing to come to my home and provide pastoral and sacramental care to me over the last three years.

My registered parish has not been able to send its priests because I now live outside its geographic boundary. The local bishop is apparently a stickler for these rules, but he writes glowingly about accompanying the "marginalized" every June.

I have been offered visits from extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, but that does not meet the same spiritual need. I need a priest. I need Confession. I need priestly Communion. I need spiritual direction and pastoral care from someone able to hear me, counsel me, absolve me, and bring me the Sacraments.

Over the last several years, the priests who have actually come to my home have been two from the local SSPX church. The people now being casually denounced online as schismatics are, in practical terms, among the only clergy who have shown up.

So when people celebrate punitive action against the SSPX or casually shout “schismatic,” they are not discussing an abstract factional dispute. They are discussing something that may leave people like me without meaningful access to confession, Communion, spiritual direction, and regular priestly care.

I am not rejecting the papacy.

I am not joining a tribe.

I am trying to remain an orthodox Catholic who follows Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium in good conscience.

Catholic obedience is real, but it is not mindless, childlike submission. Authority does not make every prudential judgment immune from moral scrutiny, nor does it make every pastoral consequence just simply because it can be defended in legal language.

The sacramental contradiction is especially difficult for me to accept. Under Catholic canon law, in a genuine situation of necessity, a Catholic may under certain conditions receive confession, the Eucharist, and anointing from an Orthodox priest whose sacraments the Church recognizes as valid. The Orthodox Churches have been separated from Rome for nearly a thousand years.

Yet I am now told that I cannot ordinarily receive valid absolution from an SSPX priest who professes the Catholic faith, recognizes the papacy, celebrates the Roman rite, and has actually been willing to come to my home, because Rome has withdrawn or denied the necessary faculties.

I understand the canonical distinctions between validity, liceity, jurisdiction, and supplied faculties. I have studied them. My objection is not that I do not understand the law. My objection is to the justice, consistency, and pastoral mercy of the result.

A Catholic in genuine necessity may be permitted to approach an Orthodox priest who is not in communion with Rome, yet may be forbidden from approaching a Catholic priest who professes the same Creed, recognizes the pope, celebrates the traditional Roman liturgy, and is physically present and willing to provide pastoral care.

That may be legally distinguishable. It does not automatically make it pastorally coherent. It certainly does not make the human consequences disappear.

I also question the hypocrisy of a synodal posture in which nearly everyone outside the Church is assured of love, dialogue, fraternity, accompaniment, and even shared religious gestures, while the SSPX is treated as uniquely intolerable. We are told that no one should be excluded. We are told to listen before judging. We are told to accompany people whose lives and beliefs stand in profound tension with Catholic teaching. We are told to recognize seeds of truth everywhere.

But when the subject is traditional Catholics, the language changes. Dialogue becomes discipline. Accompaniment becomes condemnation. Nuance disappears. People who have spent years studying the crisis are dismissed as disobedient, rigid, ignorant, or schismatic. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge that asymmetry is not being intellectually honest.

This does not mean that every action of the SSPX is correct. It does not mean that consecrating bishops without papal approval is insignificant. It does not mean that legitimate questions about authority, communion, and canonical order should be ignored.

It means that the Church cannot preach mercy, dialogue, listening, and accompaniment to the entire world while applying only punishment, exclusion, and contempt to traditional Catholics without expecting people to notice the contradiction.

It also means that people should stop treating this as an online blood sport. For some of us, this is not a debate about which Catholic faction wins. It may determine whether we have access to a priest. It may determine whether we can go to confession. It may determine whether we receive Communion from a priest rather than going months without the sacraments. It may determine whether someone comes to our home when we are ill, disabled, isolated, or dying. We saw this on stark display during the COVID crisis. And then, it was the SSPX that carried the torch for millions while local Dioceses closed churches and denied the Sacraments all across the globe.

That is why I cannot treat this as an abstract canonical controversy. I am not asking anyone to adopt all of my conclusions. I am asking people to recognize the real spiritual and human consequences of what is being done. I am asking for intellectual honesty about Rome’s double standards. I am asking for consistency in the application of mercy.

And I am asking whether a Church that speaks so often about accompaniment can find a way to accompany Catholics like me, rather than leaving us alone and sacramentally stranded.

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5:53 PM · Jul 2, 2026

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Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and for the restoration of the Church.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

The Catholic Monitor

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https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com

I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to also pray for the end of this war. Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTube: ...Read more Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTubeFranklin & Graham calls on Christians to pray for 'end to the bloodshed' ahead of Trump-Putin summit...7mo

Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To ... Daily news from a Catholic perspective on issues relating to current events in the Catholic Church, world politi...

Conclave Notes:

Has the Trad Media fallen into a COVID-like mass formation with Leo XVI? While it's humorous to see the former anti-Francis Trad pundits suddenly acting like teen age girls infatuated with Leo, it could lead to a Trojan Horse effect

It appears that a group of Bishops or Cardinals needs to give Leo XIV Dubia questions on if he still supports "Invalid and Sacrilegious" Confession

"Prevost’s reported support...allowing divorced & civilly 'remarried'...to receive Holy Communion": “Whoever…helps...promulgation of heresy…is suspected of heresy.” - The Catholic Monitor

-- Open letter urges Pope Leo XIV to correct ‘scandalous incoherence’ in Amoris Laetitia...[Wow! Even notorious Popesplainer Fr.] Harrison warns that Pope Francis taught a ‘dangerous self-contradiction’ on Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ petitioning Pope Leo to correct the record. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/08/open-letter-urges-pope-leo-xiv-to.html]

--  Dr. Seifert, regarded as one of the greatest living Catholic philosophers, founding Rector of the International Academy of Philosopher & friend of John Paul II, to Cardinals: INVESTIGATE FRANCIS' HERESIES, VALIDITY BEFORE THE CONCLAVE.."If Francis is found guilty of heresy or apostasy, then: - His cardinal appointments would be invalid" [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/dr-seifert-philosopher-personal-friend.html] 

-- Are the Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming conclave authentically appointed & morally justified in voting, or will the shadow of Francis's possible illegitimacy cast itself over the next papacy?  [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/are-cardinals-who-will-participate-in.html]

-- 5 Dubia Questions for 1P5's Steve Skojec & All faithful Catholics especially Francis is definitely Pope Cardinals, Bishops & pundits [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/06/5-dubia-questions-for-steve-skojec.html]

Francis Notes:

l– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the [J6] DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.