What is one to think, and what is one to do, in the face of the episcopal consecrations announced by the Society of Saint Pius X at Écône for July 1st, and the consequent latae sententiae excommunication that will be reaffirmed by the Holy See?
The first consideration to be made is that, if this comes to pass, we will be confronted with a painful trial — not only for the world of Catholic Tradition, of which the Society of Saint Pius X has been a part since its foundation on November 1, 1970, by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, but also for Pope Leo XIV. The Pontiff has indeed identified the internal reconciliation of the Church as one of the principal objectives of his pontificate, and he would find himself, barely more than a year after his election, having to confront a new tearing of the ecclesial fabric, with the risk of aggravating divisions that have been awaiting a resolution for decades.
On the substance of the controversy, one cannot avoid pointing out what appears to be a genuine paradox. Among the many reasons advanced by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 — and now taken up again by the Society of Saint Pius X to justify episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate — the argument from the state of necessity of the faithful in the face of the gravity of the ecclesial crisis is, at one and the same time, both the weakest and the strongest argument.
The state of necessity is, by its very nature, an exceptional condition that permits deviation from the ordinary application of certain norms in view of a higher good — which, in the case of the Church, is the salvation of souls. But who has the authority to verify the existence of such a state and to determine its beginning and end? It is evident that this assessment cannot be left to the judgment of the Society of Saint Pius X itself. Were that the case, one would have to conclude that the state of necessity ceases when the Society deems it to have ceased — effectively attributing to it a power of judgment over the Holy See that is incompatible with the hierarchical and visible constitution of the Church. The result would be a situation in which a particular body sets itself up as the ultimate criterion for evaluating the actions of the supreme authority.
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.
The existence of an episcopal line deriving from Archbishop Richard Williamson — one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 and subsequently expelled from the Society of Saint Pius X — shows concretely how the logic of the state of necessity, once detached from a higher principle of authority capable of delimiting and regulating it, can generate further divisions. This is a phenomenon which, beyond any judgments on the persons involved, illustrates the intrinsic risk of episcopal consecrations founded on subjective assessments of the state of necessity.
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. In his letter to priests of April 27, 1987, he wrote: "The faithful who are still Catholic find themselves in many places in a desperate spiritual situation. It is this appeal that the Church hears; it is for these situations that she grants jurisdiction through the law of supplied jurisdiction." The decisive criterion for him was not the assertion of a right proper to the Society, but the spiritual need of the faithful. The episcopal consecrations of 1988 were intended as a response to this appeal of souls.
We thus find ourselves before the paradox. The Society of Saint Pius X, by invoking the state of necessity, grounds a large part of its justification on the primacy of pastoral requirements over strictly juridical and doctrinal considerations — thereby embracing that very primacy of pastoral practice which is a foundational mandate of Vatican II. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, by contrast, invokes Vatican II, yet does not acknowledge the weight of the pastoral argument and employs against the Society the terms and concepts of pre-conciliar theology, in the name of the binding force of doctrine and law.
In this confused situation, the only sensible counsel that can be offered to those who are uncertain is to abide by the principle of logic and law: In dubiis standum est pro statu quo, donec ratio certa contrarium persuadeat — "In cases of doubt, one must hold to the existing state of affairs, until certain proof demonstrates the contrary." Reason suggests that each person remain in the position in which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does, avoiding being drawn into sterile polemics and emotional proclamations that have no other result than to reopen old wounds and pour vinegar into the wounds of the Church.
The problem that presents itself today is far broader than the grave matter of the July 1st episcopal consecrations and their canonical consequences. Nor does the question exhaust itself in the debate over the traditional liturgy or the interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At the heart of the controversy lies the historical and theological judgment on the twentieth century — a century that profoundly marked the destiny of the Church and of the contemporary world.
A little over a hundred years ago, the conflagration of the First World War brought to an end the international order born of the Christian centuries, while the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 set an even vaster fire in the world. Yet in the same year in which Bolshevism seized power, Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children of Fatima, explaining the true causes of the crisis of the modern world and assuring, after chastisements, wars, and persecutions, the final triumph of her Immaculate Heart. The message of Fatima was addressed to all of humanity, but in a particular way to the Pastors of the Church, within which Modernism had begun to spread its deadly poison. Against this evil, Providence raised up Saint Pius X. With the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907 — ten years before the apparitions at Fatima — the great Pontiff denounced with prophetic clarity the process of self-dissolution of the decades that would follow. Pascendi and Fatima constitute, respectively, the doctrinal diagnosis and the supernatural response to the crisis of modernity. These events, in turn, acquire their authentic significance only when placed within a broader perspective that allows one to read the events of history as phases of a single struggle that crosses the centuries.
It is here that the vision of Saint Augustine takes on an extraordinary relevance for our time. In the City of God, the great Doctor of the Church interprets history as the permanent confrontation between those who orient their lives toward God and those who reject the divine order. The Augustinian tradition, with its capacity to read historical events in the light of Providence, offers the interpretive key necessary for confronting questions that continue to determine the life of the Church — with its apostasies, its persecutions, and its acts of heroism.
The last word, in this dramatic horizon, belongs to him who holds the divine mandate to guide the Church and whom the Society of Saint Pius X itself acknowledges as the legitimate Vicar of Christ — the reigning Pope, Leo XIV. No solution to the grave problems afflicting the Mystical Body of Christ will be found outside of him or against him.
