The teachings of the Second Vatican Council have emerged as the main obstacle to reconciliation between the Society of St Pius X and the Holy See.
Three conditions for SSPX reconciliation with Rome have been revealed in a letter from its secretary-general, Father Christian Thouvenot, to regional superiors.
Part of the first condition is “The freedom to accuse and even to correct the promoters of the errors or the innovations of modernism, liberalism, and Vatican II and its aftermath”.
Before the SSPX letter was made public, the newly installed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, had declared: “The assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false.”
Archbishop Mueller is also president of the pontifical commission “Ecclesia Dei”, the Vatican body responsible for dialogue with the Society of St Pius X.
The archbishop said he is optimistic about SSPX reconciliation, but the teachings of the Church — including the dogmatic content of the Second Vatican Council — will never be up for re-negotiation.
“An ecumenical council, according to the Catholic faith, is always the supreme teaching authority of the Church,” he said.
Archbishop Mueller explained that different texts of Vatican II hold different levels of teaching authority, and distinctions should be made between pastoral pronouncements and authoritative doctrinal statements. “Whatever is dogmatic can never be negotiated,” he said.
Two other conditions in Father Thouvenot’s letter — which is not the SSPX’s official reply to the Holy See — are the right to use the traditional liturgy exclusively and the right to have at least one bishop — neither of which is seen as a stumbling block to reconciliation.
The letter also expressed the desire for a separate ecclesiastical court of the first instance; the exemption of SSPX houses from diocesan bishops; and a pontifical commission “for the tradition”, with the majority of the members and the president in favour of tradition.
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Image: Monks and Mermaids