But What Is the "State of Necessity"?
I wish to dwell on a concept that is frequently invoked in an ambiguous and contradictory manner — above all to justify the episcopal consecrations that took place at Écône on July 1, 2026: the "state of necessity."
A fundamental point must be clarified at the outset: one must not confuse the term "state of necessity" with the grave crisis the Church is passing through today. This crisis is an undeniable historical and sociological datum. Some trace its origins to Pope Francis, others to the post-conciliar period, others still to the Second Vatican Council itself. These historical references contain a measure of truth, but the phenomenon is broader and more remote in time. Already Saint Pius X, in the prophetic encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907, diagnosed the existence of the gravest evils penetrating the Church through Modernism. Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in his now-classic work Revolution and Counter-Revolution, published in 1959, situated this crisis within the framework of a centuries-long process begun with the dissolution of medieval Christendom. Romano Amerio, in his Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, published in 1985, offered a broad and penetrating diagnosis of the ills of the Church of his time. That same year, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published The Ratzinger Report together with Vittorio Messori, sounding the alarm about the state of contemporary Catholicism. Having become Pope under the name of Benedict XVI, he devoted his final year of pontificate precisely to the crisis of faith. Since then the situation has deteriorated dramatically, and only someone who is spiritually or intellectually blind could deny the evidence of this crisis.
The historical fact of a gravissimo crisis in the Church does not coincide, however, with the juridical and moral category of the "state of necessity." These are two distinct notions that must not be confused. The state of necessity presupposes an exceptional situation, but is not identical with it. It is an institution of moral theology and law, developed to govern extraordinary situations in which the ordinary observance of the law appears to conflict with the good that the law itself intends to protect. The ecclesial crisis may certainly constitute the context within which the problem of the state of necessity arises, but between the historical situation and the moral and juridical judgment there exists a further step, one requiring prudence and a rigorous evaluation of the facts.
Moral doctrine defines the state of necessity as the condition in which a person, in order to avoid a grave, imminent, and unavoidable evil, performs an act that, under ordinary circumstances, would be illicit or forbidden. In other words, it concerns not so much the external situation in itself as the prudential judgment of one who must act in the face of that situation. For this reason, the state of necessity arises from the encounter between an exceptional situation and the personal responsibility of whoever must decide how to act. The crisis may be objective; the state of necessity, by contrast, concerns the subjective assessment of the concrete action to be taken in that crisis.
The Code of Canon Law of 1983 expressly governs this matter in canons 1323 and 1324. Canon 1323 establishes that no penalty attaches to one who has violated a law when "compelled by grave fear, even if only relatively grave, or by necessity or grave inconvenience, unless, however, the act is intrinsically evil or tends to the harm of souls." The norm does not create an arbitrary derogation from the law, but acknowledges that exceptional circumstances may arise in which juridical responsibility is extinguished or diminished.
A first characteristic of the state of necessity is its essentially exceptional and provisional character. It arises to respond to a concrete and temporally delimited situation. It cannot be transformed into a permanent condition, nor constitute an ordinary regime of government or ecclesial life. If the necessity were to become permanent, it would cease to be a genuine "exception" and would end by emptying the ordinary discipline of the Church of its very meaning.
A historical crisis may extend over decades; the state of necessity, by contrast, concerns specific acts, performed in precise circumstances, in order to confront a concrete and immediate danger. The crisis constitutes the context; the state of necessity is the prudential judgment which can, in rigorously delimited cases, justify or excuse a particular course of conduct.
There is, finally, an inviolable limit upon which both moral theology and canon law insist. The state of necessity can never justify an intrinsically evil act. The principle formulated by Saint Paul and constantly reaffirmed by the Magisterium of the Church applies here: evil may never be done so that good may come of it — non sunt facienda mala ut veniant bona (Rom 3:8). Certain acts, by reason of their very moral object, remain always illicit, regardless of circumstances and historical context.
It is precisely on this point that the theological and canonical debate is focused. The act performed on the basis of the state of necessity cannot contradict principles of divine law or norms that, by their nature, admit of no derogation. Now, episcopal consecrations performed without a mandate and against the will of the Pope have, as their objective end, the creation of a reality independent of the Roman Pontiff and of the bishops in communion with him. But this is intrinsically illicit, whatever historical circumstances may be adduced to justify the gesture.
The true problem, therefore, does not consist in establishing whether or not a crisis exists in the Church — whose existence is evident to all. The decisive question is another: whether, in the presence of a crisis however grave, it is morally and juridically licit to perform an act that constitutes a violation of the hierarchical constitution of the Church, as divinely instituted by Jesus Christ — an act that in effect refuses the primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff and introduces a practice that finds no precedent in the two-thousand-year tradition of the Church.
If all of this is not clear, the "state of necessity" risks being nothing more than a state of confusion.
