Is the SSPX Position Really "indefensible?" Part 1

Cardinal Wojtyla and Cardinal Slipyj both ordained clandestinely
without permission from the Vatican violating canon law.

I'm currently reading SSPX Indefensible by Dom Dalmasso of the Logos Project. He was raised in the SSPX, spent two years in a Benedictine Monastery, and later joined the Marine Corps for a time. Twelve years ago, he transitioned his family into the FSSP and has joined the SSPX critics. His document on is really just a reiteration of points made by John Salza, ex-32nd degree Mason, Robert Siscoe, and Andrew Bartel, all of whom came out of the SSPX as Novus Ordo (NO) reverts and now attack the SSPX as schismatic and a danger to the faith.

As I read the works of these men (and I do read them because searching for the truth requires a careful look at what your philosophical opponents say), it emphasizes to me that the Church is, indeed, in crisis, a crisis of mass confusion (pun intended). 

The newly reformed Novus Ordo reverts seem to ignore the reality of the crisis and offer no solutions except to embrace what Bartel calls "Frankenchurch," a term he picked up from Fr. Anthony Cekada, a sedevacantist priest who died in 2020. Embrace the NO. Grin and bear it. Refuse to resist. 

That attitude smacks to me of quietism. Let the Holy Spirit work it all out. Just sit tight, oh, and don't forget to give to the Bishop's Appeal.

But the reality is that God uses us when a Church crisis arises. He used St. Athanasius, St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Augustine and many other saints who fought a crisis in their own times. God also, as the priest who witnessed our 1969 marriage told us, uses the laity. "The laity always bring things back on track," he said. Fulton Sheen often said the same thing.

So when I came across the article by Dom Dalmasso, which is long, I decided to read it, study it, and think about it. Is he right? Is the SSPX position really indefensible? Am I sinning by going to an SSPX chapel? 

I'll need more than one blog post to cover the article. 

Since this isn't the first time I've jumped into the murky waters of SSPX criticism, I'll just make a brief comment about one of the men mentioned above, Andrew Bartel. When I read his story in Catholic World Report a few years ago, my conclusion was that he came from a very troubled and divided family and was not an "authority" I could trust, or an authority at all for that matter. People can be stubborn; they can disagree. You can blame that on... whatever...and make the "whatever" the scapegoat. For Bartel, the scapegoat seems to be traditionalism and the SSPX. And so, in the end, he "returned" to the Novus Ordo. Here's what he wrote:

I informed my parents of my intention to return to the Church I had been baptized in. This is when hell broke loose in my family, and all semblance of false peace fell away. They were shocked, horrified, and embarrassed. They blamed themselves and blamed each other. Then they cemented themselves into their chosen Traditionalist foxholes, and it became a household war.

Wow! Talk about a dysfunctional family.

Frankly, I would never trust Andrew Bartel on anything at this point. To me airing dirty family laundry in public is repulsive. He's a young man who started high school in 2011 which, by my calculation, makes him about 26 years old. Presumably his parents and siblings are still living. How do you think they feel reading the description below of his family life and homecoming from the SSPX boarding school in France?:

Upon my return in 2012, my family was walking around with candles and believed the earth was the center of the universe. My parents had become enamored with the writings of Charles A. Coulombe and Solange Strong Hertz. These were two intelligent Traditionalists who had followed the logical trajectory of Traditionalist principles, and they were advocating ideas and doctrines which, interestingly, most Traditionalists would reject....Dad still trusted the leadership of Bishop Williamson, and so he leaned toward the Resistance. Mom thought that the chickens had finally come home to roost for Lefebvre’s Society, and she gravitated more toward the Sedevacantist groups. I was a Trad Non-Denom.

Dramatic, emotional stories and personal experiences, like soap operas, may be riveting. Whether they really point to the truth is another matter.

And then there are the other "experts," of course, like John Salza who went from 32nd degree masonry, to traditionalism, to the Novus Ordo, and now attacks the SSPX. Who will be his next dance partner I wonder? 

At any rate, these are the men who attack the SSPX as schismatic raising many issues that simply indicate the state of chaotic confusion in the Church. They talk about the disunity among the traditionally oriented as if that proves the SSPX is wrong. I find that laughable in view of the chaos and disunity in the NO Church. Can they really be serious?

But enough of that. On to the document.

Dalmasso quotes canon law and statements of the SSPX basing his work on John Salza et al. I won't go into everything that made my antennae quiver, but here was the first biggie:

On July 23, 1976, Lefebvre received a suspension a divinis[9] for ordaining priests without dimissorial letters, which is in direct violation of Canon 1383:

A bishop who, contrary to the prescript of can. 1015, ordains without legitimate dimissorial letters someone who is not his subject is prohibited for a year from conferring the order. The person who has received the ordination, however, is ipso facto suspended from the order received.[10]

Why did I find this jarring? Because Pope John Paul II did exactly the same thing when he was Cardinal of Krakow as Peter Kwasniewski points out in a fascinating article on clandestine ordinations:

Cardinal Wojtyła and one of his auxiliary bishops, Juliusz Groblicki, clandestinely ordained priests for service in Czechoslovakia, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that the Holy See had forbidden underground bishops in that country to perform such ordinations. The clandestine ordinations in Kraków were always conducted with the explicit permission of the candidate’s superior—his bishop or, in the case of members of religious orders, his provincial.... Cardinal Wojtyła did not inform the Holy See of these ordinations. He did not regard them as acts in defiance of Vatican policy, but as a duty to suffering fellow believers. And he presumably did not wish to raise an issue that could not be resolved without pain on all sides. He may also have believed that the Holy See and the Pope knew that such things were going on in Kraków, trusted his judgment and discretion, and may have welcomed a kind of safety valve in what was becoming an increasingly desperate situation.[2]

Remember, and I repeat, that the Vatican had forbidden clandestine ordinations. Cardinal Wojtyla performed them anyway. Hmm...sound familiar? Did he not incur suspension by his actions? Or, in fact is it not true that, sometimes a "desperate situation" requires desperate actions. Kwasniewski sums it up:

Whether or not we are among those who laud “John Paul the Great,” one thing is clear: what he did in Kraków was entirely justified, and adds to, rather than detracts from, the luster of his character.

Amen! He did what was necessary to preserve the faith.

That isn't the only example Kwasniewski offers. He talks about unapproved clandestine episcopal ordinations by Cardinal Josef Slipyj in the Soviet Union. Is there any discussion of the automatic suspension of these men and those they ordained? If you can find it, please share with us here.

Apparently some illicit ordinations of priests and bishops are more equal than others.

Neither Wojtyla or Slipyj was declared schismatic or excommunicate despite the "very grave" act of ordaining without Vatican permission. I'm not aware that any of the "experts" attacking the SSPX have addressed these violations of canon law by these two cardinals one of whom is now a canonized saint and the other whose cause is in process.

So is there a crisis in the Church? Was Archbishop Lefebvre justified in seeing and responding to the same kind of emergency that his two predecessors experienced? The same arguments used to condemn Archbishop Lefebvre's ordinations existed in the cases of Cardinals Wojtyla and Slipyj didn't they? And yet, we hear nothing about these cases. Why? Because they damage the arguments used to discredit Archbishop Lefebvre? Do Salza and company really not know about them? How honest are these men as they relentlessly trash the SSPX.

Kwasniewski summarizes the situation:

When the Church is under attack and her survival is at stake, or when her common good is gravely threatened, flagrant “disobedience” to papal commands or laws can be justified—indeed, not only justified, but right, meritorious, the stuff of sanctity. No one has ever questioned that rules concerning episcopal consecrations are the pope’s right to establish, and that Wojtyła and Slipyj unquestionably and knowingly violated ecclesiastical law, which should have merited them a place of opprobrium alongside Archbishop Lefebvre. Instead, we celebrate them as heroes of the resistance against Communism. 

The reason we do so is that we recognize a more fundamental law than that of canonical dictates: salus animarum suprema lex, the salvation of souls is the supreme law. It is for the salvation of souls that the entire structure of ecclesiastical law exists; it has no other purpose than ultimately to protect and advance the sharing of the life of Christ with mankind. In normal circumstances, ecclesiastical laws create a structure within which the Church’s mission may unfold in an orderly and peaceful way. But there can be situations of anarchy or breakdown, corruption or apostasy, where the ordinary structures become impediments to, not facilitators of, the Church’s mission. In these cases, the voice of conscience dictates that one do what needs to be done, in prudence and charity, for the achievement of the sovereign law.

My husband and I have seen nothing but wisdom and charity from the priests of the SSPX during COVID and in its aftermath. But we aren't naive. We've known many priests over the years who were unfaithful to their holy vocation and scandalized the flock. I used to carpool with a woman who ended up "marrying" my pastor, a liberal who dissented from many Church teachings. I had many disagreements with Father before he abandoned the priesthood. I have no doubt the SSPX has bad priests as well. No human institution is without its Judases. 

So is the SSPX "indefensible?" The supreme law of the Church is the salvation of souls. Obviously John Paul II and Cardinal Slipyj believed their actions, which violated canon law and incurred automatic penalties, were justified. They were never punished or called out for disobedience. Archbishop Lefebvre did what they did at a time of serious crisis in the Church. Is the ascendancy of neo-modernism less serious than Communism? I don't think so. What about you?

TO BE CONTINUED.... SEE PART 2