(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, by threatening the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) with excommunication, contradicts his previous denunciation of such Church penalties, an SSPX priest noted.
In a Sunday sermon in the Church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, SSPX priest Father Denis Puga clarified the meaning of excommunication and questioned whether the SSPX will truly and validly be excommunicated in July when they consecrate new bishops.
At one point, he recalled how the current Prefect for the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), who has already prepared an order of excommunication for the SSPX, once regarded with revulsion the idea of preventing people from “receiving communion.”
In a homily in the cathedral of La Plata in early 2023, Fernández had said:
“You know that for many centuries the Church went in another direction. Without realizing it, it developed an entire philosophy and morality full of classifications, to classify people, to put labels on them … this one is like this, that one is like that; this one can receive Communion, this one cannot; this one can be forgiven, this one cannot … it is terrible that this happened to us in the Church. Thanks be to God, Pope Francis helps us free ourselves from those schemes.” (emphasis added)
And yet, by preparing an act of excommunication for the SSPX, Fernández does the very thing he then condemned because excommunication excludes a Catholic from reception of the sacraments, including Holy Communion.
“This is the same man who, today, is raising the specter of excommunication and threatening schism … if it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable,” Fr. Puga said.
In his sermon, he stressed that Church law makes clear “in black and white” that “one who acts driven by a state of necessity does not fall under the penalty of excommunication.”
The priest went on to distinguish between the SSPX’s planned act of consecrating bishops without papal approval, an act of “disobedience,” and actual schism.
“Schism consists of rejecting the authority of those who occupy the sees of the successors of the Apostles: the Pope and the bishops. To reject their authority is to no longer recognize them as legitimate pastors, which is absolutely not the case for us,” Fr. Puga pointed out.
The “proof” that the SSPX recognizes the authority of the pope and bishops is that it has not established “a parallel Church with a parallel hierarchy and parallel bishops” which have their own jurisdiction. Instead, the SSPX bishops confer sacraments without creating their own dioceses.
Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, who was formerly in charge of Ecclesia Dei, affirmed that the SSPX was not in schism after the 1988 consecrations for this reason, Fr. Puga noted.
Pope Benedict XVI also recognized this fact when in 2009 he “reiterated that the SSPX was under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that is, a congregation that deals with internal matters within the Catholic Church, and not the Pontifical Council for Ecumenism, which deals with non-Catholic religions or separated communities.”
Fr. Puga concluded by drawing a parallel between the Church of today and the time of Jesus Christ when followers of Christ were banned from the synagogue.
When Jesus healed a man born blind and the synagogue leaders asked the parents of the man, “Who did this to you? How did it happen?” the parents replied, “We know he was blind from birth, but how he regained his sight, we don’t know,” Fr. Puga recounted.
“And Saint John adds this remark: His parents spoke this way because they were afraid. Why? Because anyone who adhered to Jesus Christ was excluded from the synagogue. Excluded from the synagogue, that is to say, in a way, excommunicated … never forget that.”