Tomorrow, at a seminary in Écône, Switzerland, the Society of St Pius X intends to consecrate four new bishops without the permission of Rome. The Vatican has warned that this would be a schismatic act and that everyone involved would incur automatic excommunication.
It should go without saying that they should halt their planned consecration. The SSPX has only two bishops left, both in their sixties, and without new ones the society will slowly die, so I understand the panic. But consecrating bishops against the express will of the Pope would make a bad situation worse.
That said, the SSPX will do what they will. The easy response would be to focus on their sin, but instead I want to focus on our sins. I want to focus on how we failed the SSPX.
There is a phenomenon in social psychology called the black sheep effect. Ideological groups are harsher towards an in-group member who deviates by 1 per cent than an out-group member who deviates by 99 per cent.
This attitude arises in the Church when we flip two sayings of Jesus. About himself, he says: “Whoever is not with me is against me.” About his disciples, when John wants to stop an outsider casting out demons in Jesus’s name, he says: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Towards Christ, you cannot be halfway or neutral – you have to be all in. But for us, the standard is different. Assume they are a friend until they prove themselves an enemy (and then love your enemy).
Christians today frequently flip these sayings. Towards Christ, we have gone soft. Whoever is not explicitly against him gets counted as basically for him. Non-Catholics are okay as long as they are good people; who are we to judge? But we harshly discipline Catholics who defy us, who question our authority, who embarrass us in front of the world. Whoever is not actively with us must be against us.
For example, consider the “Pride Mass” that took place in New York City this past week. The priest presiding over the annual event told the National Catholic Reporter he did it to reach “those who may not enter the doors of a church”. The Mass celebrated acts the Catechism calls “intrinsically disordered” and presumably gave Communion to people in public states of mortal sin. The archdiocese and the Paulist Fathers did not comment on the event.
Contrast the reaction to the Pride Mass with the Church’s reaction to a priest celebrating an illicit Latin Mass. Suddenly comments abound. Restrictions are made and priests are moved.
We forgive sins against Christ more readily than sins against ourselves. We are more patient with the person who rejects Christian teaching outright than with the person who disobeys the Church’s authority while begging to remain Catholic. That is what I think is really happening with the SSPX. It is not, at bottom, about schism.
Some of the Pride Mass attendees are living in flagrant disregard for Christ’s teaching. Latin Mass attendees, like members of the SSPX, want to be more faithful to Christ. But members of the hierarchy take the latter as a personal attack, so they get disciplined.
This schism is serious and I do not want it to happen. But we should consider our own biases against people like the SSPX and practise what we preach. For years now we have talked about going to the peripheries, reaching the margins, accompanying the people on the edges. Pope Francis made it the language of his papacy.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the peripheries became a costume. We started reaching out to popular, mainstream groups and calling it the margins. Homosexual couples are accepted by the culture. They have a month-long celebration and their unions are recognised by the state. Whatever they are, they are not on the margins. The Church wants to become mainstream while claiming it is reaching the disenfranchised.
If you want a periphery, I’ll give you a periphery. Traditional Catholics are on the periphery. They are pushed there constantly. Their Masses are cancelled or moved to the middle of nowhere. The average Catholic does not know they exist. Their priests are growing old and dying. But they find Christ and community in this Mass. Still, they are ignored – until they make themselves heard; then they are punished.
The SSPX is the redheaded stepchild, the chronically disobedient child. The chronically disobedient child deserves correction and punishment; nobody disputes that. But when a child is persistently disobedient, you also have to ask what the parents have done. Bad behaviour is sometimes the fruit of bad parenting.
In every schism, the Church bears some blame. I am not asking the Pope to bless what happens on July 1. I am asking us as a Church to examine our consciences. Ask whether we have given the SSPX a fraction of the patience, the dialogue and the accommodation we have extended to people who reject far more of the Faith than the society.
We are very good at forgiving Christ’s enemies. We should at least be willing to extend the same grace to our own.
