David Hahn was joined on this week's episode by Catholic Answers apologist Joe Heschmeyer, host of the Shameless Popery podcast, for a wide ranging conversation on the SSPX crisis, the church's teaching on religious liberty, the state of Catholic apologetics and what it takes to raise the next generation in the faith.
The pair opened on the Society of St Pius X, whose excommunications have drawn global attention despite the group's relatively small size. Heschmeyer argued the real dispute is not the Latin Mass but theology, chiefly collegiality and religious liberty, and that the heart of the matter is prudence rather than pure principle. He drew a sharp line between the SSPX's case and the frequent complaint that Rome should excommunicate figures like Fr James Martin for his ambiguity on church teaching. "You can't excommunicate someone for bad vibes," he said, arguing that Martin's careful hedging leaves no clear juridical offence to act on, whereas the SSPX's decision to consecrate bishops against an explicit papal order was, in his words, "much more black and white excommunicable than what many of the other people being bandied about here have done." He also pushed back on comparisons to the Vatican's deal with China, arguing that state involvement in choosing bishops has deep historical precedent, unlike the SSPX's flat defiance of the Pope, and traced the society's posture back to its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
