A Matter of Justice
On October 14, 2022, the website of the Fraternity of St. Peter, claves.org, published a study signed by Fr. Josef Bisig and Fr. Louis-Marie de Blignières on September 29, 2022. Under the title “Back to the Consecrations of June 30, 1988,” this text is a response to the articles published in the July-August issue of Courrier de Rome.
Should we come back to it? And thank the authors of this text for giving us an opportunity to respond to them? Can we hope that this response to their response might change Fr. Bisig’s or Fr. de Blignières’ mind? It goes without saying that the goal of exchanging ideas is to make charity win out and consequently, it is ultimately for the good of the persons involved. But this good is first of all that of their intelligence, which demands the truth, and above and beyond the “respect due to persons who defend another opinion,” the fact remains that two contrary explanations cannot possibly both be true—and therefore respectable—at the same time. The fact also—and more importantly—remains that the disagreement in this case is not on a matter of opinion. It is a disagreement on the legitimacy of an action—the episcopal consecrations of 1988—that is not morally indifferent, and also on the dogmatic and theological founding principles that are considered to have authorized this action. The Operation Survival of Tradition accomplished by Abp. Lefebvre on that memorable day nearly forty years ago receives its profound explanation both from the circumstances of the times after Vatican II and from the profound nature of the episcopate. So long as they fail to agree in their evaluation of these two elements, the Society of St. Pius X and the “Ecclesia Dei” communities can only take their mutual demonstrations of respect so far.
The attitude adopted by the SSPX after the example of its founder is deserving of all the gratitude an upright and morally well-disposed intelligence should be capable of showing, for the dogmatic and theological reasons we have already pointed out, and that is why, even if we are not able to convince otherwise respectable persons, we wish to protest here against the injustice that consists not only in considering that the episcopal consecrations of June 30, 1988 “are not legitimate,” but in seeing them as “a grave attack against the unity of the Church” and labeling them “a schismatic act.” This judgment, reiterated by Fr. Bisig and Fr. de Blignières, maintains as rigorously as ever the position adopted in principle by the Fraternity of St. Peter that claims the episcopate of the bishops of the SSPX cannot be Catholic insofar as it is schismatic. But with all due respect for the intention of its authors, this judgment and position are gravely unjust toward the SSPX and it is important to denounce their false presuppositions yet again.
We can start by saying that the response given on the website claves.org is disappointing. For it does no more than reaffirm the same basic ideas, without actually developing them and without drawing from them any real arguments that could call into question the explanation published in Courrier de Rome. In a word, the authors merely reaffirm two postulates: first of all, that an episcopal consecration is inseparable from jurisdiction, meaning that the consecrations of 1988, since they could not avoid usurping the jurisdiction that belongs exclusively to the Pope, were already schismatic in themselves; secondly, that after the consecrations of 1988, the Society removed itself from the Pope’s jurisdiction and refused to be in communion with the Church, which is precisely what schism is.
The two articles that follow will endeavor to examine the soundness of these two postulates.1
The Episcopate Yet Again
1. Refusal of the act and refusal of the power
We would like to begin by dissipating the confusion that the “Argued Response” begins with and that is presented to us as an objection, despite the fact that it has already been refuted many times.2 It is clear that “the act by which the Pope designates the subject to be consecrated pertains not to the power of Orders but to the government of the Church.” The Pope does indeed make use of his supreme authority as head of the Church in this act. But this does not mean that “a bishop who ordains a priest who was not designated by the Pope, even if he has no intention of transmitting any jurisdiction to this priest, actually usurps the jurisdiction of the Pope in choosing this priest to become a bishop.” To be more exact, a distinction has to be made between usurpation and usurpation, between a refusal to submit to an act of authority and a refusal to recognize the power that is the principle of this act of authority. A refusal to submit to the act of authority is disobedience and can be called a “usurpation” only improperly speaking. Only a refusal of the power constitutes a usurpation properly speaking, when, the subject not only disobeys but also refuses the principle of authority itself and by that very fact appropriates the power belonging to the authority.
Cajetan explains this in the passage cited by our objectors. Schism, he says, is incurred if one refuses obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, not accepting that which he commands, not precisely with respect to what he is commanding (for that would be equivalent to simple disobedience), but with respect to the authority with which he is commanding, in other words, refusing to recognize the Pope as head and superior. This can be seen from the translation we offer here of this passage from Cajetan:
If one refuses to heed what the Pope commands or what he judges, this can happen… first of all with regards to the object of the judgment or commandment.… Indeed, if one holds the Pope’s judgment as nothing, even with pertinacity, … it is a very grave error, but it does not make one schismatic. For, and this is often the case, one can refuse to execute what the superior commands, while nonetheless continuing to recognize the superior as such.… But if one refuses what the Pope commands or decides insofar as it belongs to his office, because one does not recognize the Pope as one’s superior, he is schismatic properly speaking, even if he is convinced he is right.… Indeed, disobedience, no matter how pertinacious it is, does not make for a schism unless it is a rebellion against the office of the Pope or against that of the Church, in such a way that one refuses to submit to the office of the Pope and to recognize him as one’s superior.3
Left: Fr. Joseph Bisig, FSSP. (Source: https://katolikker.dk/praester/). Right: Fr. Louis-Marie de Blignières in St. Augustine’s church, in Paris. (Source: wikimedia commons—© Peter Potrowl, sitemai.eu).
Therefore, while schism implies a refusal of obedience, not every refusal of obedience implies a schism. Schism is the deed of someone who refuses obedience not by reason of that which is commanded but by reason of the one who is commanding it.
Fr. Labourdette4 insists on this same distinction when commenting on this passage by Cajetan: “Not every mortal sin,” he observes, “or even every sin against charity, is schismatic, but only that sin which is directly opposed to charity as producing charity’s precise effect, which is to want to be a part of the whole that is the Church.” A disobedience that does not imply such a refusal is to be distinguished, as such, from schism: “In the same way, refusing to obey the Pope because what he commands does not please us is not schism, but simple disobedience; but refusing to obey him precisely insofar as he is head of the Church, out of rebellion against [his office], against the unity that [his office] ensures, is the sin of schism.”
It is true that Pope John Paul II, in the letter he sent to Abp. Lefebvre on June 9, 1988, exhorted him to abandon his project and therefore ordered him not to consecrate the four bishops. But even if one considers this act of authority on the part of the Pope as being justified, the Archbishop’s refusal represents at the most an act of disobedience, not a schism. For John Paul II to claim, as he did in this same letter, that this consecration “can only appear as an act of schism,” he would have had to establish that the act planned for that June 30 implied in and of itself a refusal not only of the order he had given Abp. Lefebvre, but also a refusal of the Bishop of Rome’s primacy of jurisdiction. But it is manifest that the founder of the SSPX always refused such an attitude. His sermon during the episcopal consecrations on June 30, 1988, is explicit in this respect. And allow us to point out that this is not a question of a good intention, in the sense of a subjectively good intention (or a finis operantis, as the moralists say), that is not able to change the objective nature of the act in itself. It is the intention insofar as it gives the act its species and formal object (in the sense of a finis operis, again, as the moralists say). The act accomplished by Abp. Lefebvre—even if for the sake of pure hypothesis we admitted that it was an act of disobedience, like any other act refusing to conform to an act of jurisdiction on the part of the Pope—in no way constitutes a schism, that is to say, in no way constitutes an act that refuses in principle to conform to the jurisdiction of the Pope in itself. And we have shown, based on the teachings of Pius XII,5 that this distinction is theologically possible in general and applicable in particular to the act of the episcopal consecrations done against the will of the Pope. And it is precisely this possibility that clearly eludes Fr. de Blignières and Fr. Bisig, as the rest of their response goes to show.
2. Ambivalence of the Episcopate
Indeed, their response objects that even if “there are bishops who do not have an actual jurisdiction,” nevertheless, “(unlike simple priests) all have, by virtue of their consecration, an aptitude by divine right for this jurisdiction.” On this point, Fr. de Blignières references, in a footnote, a study he wrote twenty-five years ago, published in the June 1987 issue of the review Sedes sapientiae, in Doctrinal Supplement 2. We have already discussed what to think of this study in an article of the last issue of Courrier de Rome:6 Fr. de Blignières speaks of an “aptitude” and this term can have two meanings: in the sense that the very power of jurisdiction is given by episcopal consecration, in conjunction with the power of Orders; in the sense that the power of Orders, given in its very essence by episcopal consecration, is in potency to be joined to the power of jurisdiction, which is given in its essence by canonical investiture from the Pope, not by the consecration. The entire Tradition of the Church, excellently recapitulated in the study by Fr. Raymond Dulac, prefers the second sense, whereas the first sense is defended by an isolated and recent opinion that theologians consider new, “with no roots in Tradition and lacking coherency with Revelation.”7
As Cardinal Journet points out in Volume I of his The Church of the Word Incarnate,8 the word “episcopate” is ambivalent, for it can designate (with an analogy of meanings) two really distinct powers, each understood in its essential definition, or it can designate the concrete unity of these two powers, as they are received by one and the same subject, who exercises them dependently on each other. “The power of Orders and the power of jurisdiction,” says Journet, “are two truly distinct powers. However, to put it succinctly right away, they are not independent of each other.” Rather than speaking of the aptitude of one power with regards to the other, it is preferable to speak, like this eminent Swiss theologian, of a certain dependency, which takes place on the level of the exercise of these powers. They are distinct in their origin, in their being and in their definition, and they are united only in their exercise. They are, therefore, as we have already said, “one with a unity of order, for one depends on the other in its exercise and that is why they are most often or even ordinarily exercised by one and the same subject.”
That, moreover, is why the episcopate is not the same thing as the bishop. The episcopate signifies a double power, whereas the bishop is the name of a single subject who ordinarily exercises the two powers dependently upon one another. It is true that, ordinarily, the consecrated bishop, the subject of episcopal power as such, is normally destined in the Church to also receive the power of episcopal jurisdiction, and this by reason of the ordinary course of things willed by God. In this sense, one can speak of a certain “aptitude” or ordinary intention of the consecrated bishop to receive jurisdiction. But this “aptitude” has to do with the subject, not with the power. And it does not follow from this that the episcopal power, taken as such, and no longer as in its subject, necessarily calls for the power of episcopal jurisdiction, nor that the consecration simultaneously confers both the first and the second.
This distinction between the power in its essence and the power in the subject who exercises it is fundamental here. It explains why episcopal consecration, in itself, in no way includes the power of jurisdiction, due to the fact that it causes nothing more or less than the conferral of the power of Orders on the subject who receives it. Even if this subject “should” also ordinarily, or according to a purely moral necessity, receive and exercise the power of jurisdiction, in conjunction with the power of Orders, the reception of this power of Orders in no way requires, by any necessity whatsoever, not even a moral necessity, the reception and exercise of the power of jurisdiction. To sum up Journet’s explanation, we wrote, “But one cannot say that the episcopate in itself implies always and everywhere, by virtue of its proper definition and of an almost absolute or metaphysical necessity, the union of the two powers, such that the episcopal consecration which communicates the power of Orders also immediately confers or at least strictly demands the power of jurisdiction.”9
The response made to us on the website claves.org reproduces for the umpteenth time the same passage of Pius XII’s Encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis. It is becoming fastidious to endlessly reexplain to our contradictors the precise meaning of this passage, as indicated by its context,—which clearly eludes them. “From what We have said,” writes the Pope, “it follows that no authority whatsoever, save that which is proper to the Supreme Pastor, can render void the canonical appointment granted to any bishop; that no person or group, whether of priests or of laymen, can claim the right of nominating bishops; that no one can lawfully confer episcopal consecration unless he has received the mandate of the Apostolic See.” Fr. de Blignières objects that “Fr. Gleize cites this passage without showing its meaning even though it is obvious.” The July-August 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome discussed this matter lengthily and sufficiently. We wrote that one must be careful to note the clearly indicated (“obvious”) difference in Pius XII’s wording: no one but the Supreme Pastor may withdraw or give the power of jurisdiction, whereas no one can legitimately confer an episcopal consecration against the will of the Pope. The first negation applies to the very possibility, whereas the second applies not to the possibility but to the legitimacy of something that remains possible, whether or not it is legitimate. And what is more, when in the following lines Pius XII insists upon the gravity of illegitimately conferring an episcopal consecration, we must understand this gravity as referring to the act which aggravates the usurpation, namely, communicating the power of jurisdiction against the will of the Pope. The consecration which Pius XII refers to that happened in China was not only an illegitimate consecration but also a schismatic one, due to the fact that the consecrating bishop also appropriates to himself the power of communicating jurisdiction. “If a consecration of this kind is being done contrary to all right and law, and by that crime the unity of the Church is being seriously attacked, an excommunication reserved specialissimo modo to the Apostolic See has been established which is automatically incurred by the consecrator and by anyone who has received the consecration irresponsibly conferred.”
We shall stop here. It is unfortunately likely that Fr. de Blignières and his disciples will continue to remain prisoners of the false postulates of an “autonomous episcopate,” postulates that surfaced late in the history of theology and that the most reputable authors have qualified as inconsistent novelties.10
—Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize
Endnotes
1 Only the first of these articles is published in this issue of The Angelus.
2 Paragraph 1 of the Response, entitled “No Consecration without Jurisdiction.”
3 Cajetan, Commentaire sur la Somme théologique de saint Thomas d’Aquin, IIa IIae, q. 39, a. 1, ad 2, 7.
4 Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP, La Charité. Grand cours de théologie morale/ 10, “Bibliothèque de la Revue thomiste,” Parole et Silence, 2016, p. 280.
5 See the article “Pius XII and the Episcopate” in the July-August 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome. This article was published in the November-December 2022 issue of The Angelus.
6 See the article “Fr. de Blignières and the Autonomous Episcopate” in the October 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome.
7 Article cited, n. 30.
8 Cf. n. 9 et seq. of our article “The Common Opinion of the Theologians on the Episcopate” in the July-August 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome.
9 Paragraph 23 of our article “The Common Opinion of the Theologians on the Episcopate” in the July-August 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome.
10 See the article “Fr. de Blignières and the Autonomous Episcopate” in the October 2022 issue of Courrier de Rome.