![]() The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus has a number of provisions to the effect that an Ordinary of an Ordinariate can do X or Y or Z "after consulting with the territorial bishop" or "after hearing the views of the Episcopal Conference". Nobody apart from the Evil One gains from the present stand-off. The SSPX has no redress against such obvious, and childish, 'spoiling' tactics clearly designed to hamper, wound, and divide its pastoral mission. Paradoxically, the Society, because it is deemed to be canonically non-existent, actually has complete freedom of action! So how does the bishop gain from this situation? Similarly, I know a town, not within these Three Kingdoms, with a well-established SSPX presence where, after Summorum Pontificum, the local bishop started up an EF Mass at exactly the same time as the SSPX Mass, thereby denying traditionally inclined laity the pastoral flexibility of two different Mass-times. But because of the present situation, there is nothing he can do to prevent it. The SSPX can currently set up a Mission in an area where the local bishop may have well-founded reasons for prefering this not to happen. Who gains from maintaining that situation? If some piece of canonical ingenuity, without necessarilly granting full faculties to SSPX clergy, were at least to eliminate this particular pastoral anomaly, who would be the loser? Would a shepherd who achieved this end not smell of his sheep? Would this not be Merciful? Is the SSPX not a Periphery as deserving to be reached as any other? Absolutions are given and Marriages solemnised which are of doubtful (or if you prefer it, doubted) validity. Nothing is gained by the present situation between the SSPX and the 'mainstream' Church. But let us today consider the SSPX itself, which so wisely dissociated itself from this Wyccamical eccentric. I write this on the Feast of S Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, a day this year made that bit less joyful by Bishop Williamson's sad if characteristic decision to create a new schism and himself to become a non-Catholic by incurring excommunication latae sententiae and conferring that same excommunication, with his own two hands, upon his consecrand. ![]() I hope that the SSPX will soon have a canonical status which will protect its distinctive charism as an authentic part of the Latin Church. As a beneficiary of blessed Benedict XVI's ecumenical goodwill, an Ordinariate Catholic naturally prays that the SSPX communities, to whom Benedict also reached out, might also receive the same joys and the same benefits as we received.
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