Thoughts on the SSPX

The Vatican Council, in Pastor Aeternus, defined not only papal infallibility but also papal supremacy. In fact, papal supremacy had already been implicitly defined in Quanta Cura, where denial of the dogma is condemned. These are both documents with which the Society is deeply familiar, as they regularly make use of them to argue for the limits of infallibility and the errors of Vatican II. Yet by their actions, if not by their words, they give the impression that they believe the dogma of papal supremacy is conditional at best and meaningless at worst. 

I also have concerns regarding sacramental validity. First, there is what an entertaining blog calls the “Liénart liability.” Certain theologians believed that it is so difficult to have an invalidating sacramental intention that the sacramental minister would practically have to be malicious in order to have such. Though we now know this is not really the case (we don’t assume Anglicans, for example, to be malicious), if there is a society of persons whose malice vis-à-vis the Church the popes have repeatedly cautioned us against, that society is the Freemasons. Thus, it ought not be taken lightly that Lefebvre himself believed that his consecrator, Achille Liénart, was a Freemason. It is said that Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc wrote Lefebvre a letter offering to conditionally reordain him so that there would be no doubts as to the Orders of the priests Lefebvre ordained for his society, but Lefebvre was offended by the offer and ignored it. There is also the fact that the Society has changed their stance on the validity of Novus Ordo sacraments and seems to no longer conditionally reordain clergy who come to them from the Novus Ordo.