As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.
Perhaps this statement, which does not quite clearly answer the question directly, deserves to be set in parallel with another previous official Vatican admonition as well as one from the same Ecclesia Dei commission:
Cardinal Silvio Oddi, President of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, dated March 17, 1984 answered to an inquiry made about whether attending Mass at an SSPX chapel would serve to fulfilled their Sunday Obligation, and cites Canon 1248:
According to the New Code of Canon Law, “The obligation of assisting at Mass is satisfied wherever Mass is celebrated in a Catholic rite....” I hope that settles your doubts.
Msgr. Camille Perl, Ecclesia Dei Secretary, in the May 28, 1996 letter and repeated in Protocol No. 236/98 of March 6, 1998:
In the strict sense you may fulfill your Sunday obligation by attending a Mass celebrated by a priest of the Society of St. Pius X. If your intention is simply to participate in Mass according to the 1962 Missal for the sake of devotion, this would not be a sin. It would seem that a modest contribution to the collection at Mass could be justified.
So, what are we to think of this latest reply of the Ecclesia Dei Commission? Here are some suggestions.
It may be significant that the present letter bears no signature and only the title of "The Secretariate", as if the writer was ashamed of putting his signature on ‘the bottom line’. Was he aware of his incoherence with previous letters from the same Pontifical Commission?
To avoid the incoherence, one might argue that the present letter is not addressed to the faithful who attend an SSPX chapel, but to conservatives aligned to the post-conciliar Church, and therefore, the Commission may be more demanding on them than they would be on dye-in-the-wool trads that are said to be not outside but not quite inside yet.
More profoundly, we may argue that the quote made to the pope’s letter to the bishops of the world is hinting at the bull’s eye. He said just before the alluded text:
The fact that the Society of St. Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons.
Indeed, the reason why the SSPX is on the electric chair vis-à-vis Rome today is because of doctrinal reasons and not for cultural or disciplinary problems.
By lifting the alleged excommunication, the pope offered some slack to a few individuals - the four bishops consecrated for the SSPX - but, on the level of institution, the Society is not approved by the Roman authorities in the eyes of canon law. This is because, although the SSPX had been duly established (born on November 1, 1970 in Fribourg, Switzerland), it was suppressed (illegitimately, according to Archbishop Lefebvre) for its stance against the New Mass and Vatican II. In normal circumstances, it is proper that all missionary activity descend from the pope to the missionary institutes via their superiors.
The Gordian Knot of the problem is doctrinal. We need firstly to resolve the dilemma, whether the SSPX is jansenistic and exaggerating its criticisms or whether the New Mass and Vatican II are actually condemnable in some areas. Everything hinges on this. Said otherwise, the same doctrinal reasons which urge the pope to refuse to grant us the apostolic mandate are to us so many arguments to continue our apostolate since God cannot command us to be silent dogs before the worst apostasy the Church has ever undergone.
Archbishop Lefebvre in the 70’s published a little pamphlet entitled “The master stroke of Satan”, which explained how, under the appearance of obedience, the enemy led souls into modernism. By contrast, whoever wishes to stay the arch-heretical wave is seen as disobedient.
In her history, the Church has seen many saints accused of disobedience or heresy by their legitimate authorities, Sts. Athanasius, Ignatius, John of the Cross, Joan of Arc, Mary McKillop, and many others. Is this not the time when the very Church of God is afflicting - Ecclesia Dei afflictans - her truly loyal children?
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