Main excerpts from Matteo Matzuzzi's piece for today's Il Foglio:
The Schism at the Bottom Right
Never before have a Pope and the Lefebvrian Society been so close to the breaking point. The mistake was to underestimate Leo XIV: the Augustinians remember what their confrere Luther did when he broke the unity of the Church.
Less than a week remains before July 1st, which will be a watershed date in the recent history of the Church — perhaps the most significant since that of the late twentieth century. The Society of Saint Pius X will proceed with the four announced episcopal ordinations without pontifical mandate, notwithstanding the risks that many of its own adherents consider excessive. The opinion that will prevail, it seems, is that those consecrated will not immediately come into full communion with Rome — as is whispered, not even secretly, at the Ecumenical Council. "Ordinations?" As is well known, the consecrators are validly consecrated but illegitimately so, because the path they could have taken was not taken. He who does so incurs grave penalties.
In 1988, John Paul II excommunicated Lefebvre, the new bishops he had consecrated, and those consecrated by him. The same criterion will be applied — and there is no reason to doubt it — since this has been made known by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith with a communiqué: "The episcopal ordinations of the Society of Saint Pius X do not have the corresponding pontifical mandate. This act will constitute 'a schismatic act' and 'formal adherence to the schism constitutes a grave offense against God and carries with it the excommunication established by the law of the Church.'" An excommunication that will be applied solely to the new bishops being consecrated, or to all those who participate in the Lefebvrian liturgies, as some hypothesize somewhat rashly?
It is a question that is investing this first phase of the Leonine pontificate, built on the declared will to preach and reaffirm in every circumstance peace and unity within the Church. It is evident that cutting the branch will not be painless. The former Holy Office, now more cautious and astute, explains the "threat" by citing two Johannine documents: the first is the apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, in which Wojtyla put in black and white that ordaining bishops without the necessary Vatican permission is an act of "grave disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a matter of utmost gravity" and "such disobedience — which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy — constitutes a schismatic act" for which one incurs "the grave penalty of excommunication." The second is documented in the Note of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts of August 24, 1996, which made explicit that the basis of the schismatic act is a "doctrinal root."
On the part of the Society there is manifest stupor: "Is it a question of survival?" they say. ...
Even with the most permissive Pope, Francis, who showed himself very available with regard to the Society, allowing its ministers to hear confessions and celebrate marriages, the dialogue did not make any progress in recent years. A few days ago, the Society of Saint Pius X distributed a detailed Profession of Faith, consisting of 154 paragraphs covering twenty dense pages. If there were any desire to engage in dialogue, it should be sought with a lantern, especially after the words of Leo at Castel Gandolfo. One example for all, paragraph 145: "I recognize in particular that the errors of modernism represent a fearsome threat for the entire Catholic world, and that the penetration of these errors into the life of the Church, through the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar reforms, has provoked a crisis of exceptional gravity." Given these premises, it is complicated to hope that the Pope will soften his stance.
Benedict XVI, who even lifted the excommunications, used very harsh words against the Society, accusing it of "pride and self-centeredness."
Roberto de Mattei has written on his Corrispondenza Romana on the matter, finding it "complex and paradoxical:"
"If the principle of the state of necessity were admitted as a general criterion for action, any bishop who judged the Church to be passing through a grave crisis could feel authorized — or even morally obligated — to consecrate other bishops without a pontifical mandate, in order to ensure the continuity of the faith and the sacraments. The consequence would be a proliferation of parallel jurisdictions and episcopi vagantes scattered throughout the world, with inevitable effects of fragmentation, disorder, and confusion for the very faithful one would seek to protect."
"And yet this argument — so fragile on the theological and canonical level — presents itself as the strongest on the pastoral level. Archbishop Lefebvre was not a speculative theologian or a canonist, but a missionary and a pastor of souls."
