FIUV Statement on planned SSPX Episcopal Consecrations

Joint Press Release of Una Voce International (FIUV)

and the Latin Mass Society (England and Wales).

SSPX announces new Episcopal Consecrations

 

 

Una Voce International and the Latin Mass Society have heard with concern the announcement by the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), Fr Davide Pagliarani, that the SSPX will carry out Episcopal consecrations on 1st July this year.

 

Our ardent wish, shared by many Catholics of good will, is for the canonical regularisation of the SSPX, which would enable its many good works to bear the greatest possible fruit. This announcement is an indication that this outcome is a more distant prospect than it has seemed for many years.

 

We share the SSPX’s goal, that the Church’s ancient liturgy be made available as widely as possible for the good of souls. We do not share the SSPX’s analysis of the crisis of the Church in all its details. In particular we know many Catholics able to attend the Traditional Mass with all the necessary permissions from the Church’s hierarchy, such that it is not necessary for them to seek it in any irregular context.

 

We also know, however, that for others, attending the Traditional Mass has been made very difficult: in some places, this is despite the desire of qualified priests to celebrate it for the faithful, and even the willingness of the local bishop to allow this. This creates an environment in which the SSPX argument of a ‘state of emergency’ gains sympathy.

 

We urge our bishops, and above all His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, to be mindful of these pastoral realities, which are at this moment precipitating a crisis whose consequences no one can foresee. 

 

What Catholics attached to the ‘former Missal’ desire is not some harmful or novel liturgical form. Pope St John Paul II called our desire for this Missal a ‘rightful aspiration’ (Ecclesia Dei, 1988), and later Pope Benedict XVI described it as a source of ‘riches’ (Letter to Bishops, 2007). 

 

The time to act is now.

 

 

Joseph Shaw

President, Una Voce International, and Chairman, Latin Mass Society

 

Monika Rheinschmitt, Vice President and Treasurer, Una Voce International

Andris Amolins, Secretary, Una Voce International

David Forster, Treasurer, Latin Mass Society

Selina Fang, Secretary, Latin Mass Society

 

 

Note:

 

Una Voce International (Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce, FIUV) groups together more than forty lay-led associations in support of the Traditional Latin Mass around the world.

 

The Latin Mass Society, founded in 1965, supports the Traditional Latin Mass in England and Wales, and is the largest member association of the FIUV.

 

https:fiuv.org​​https://lms.org.uk

 

Contact: Joseph Shaw president@fiuv.org

LMS Press Officer: Daniel Beurthe daniel@lms.org.uk 

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Response to Cardinal Roche's text on the liturgy

Cardinal Roche’s Rearguard Action

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During the recent consistory, the meeting of cardinals in Rome, Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, handed out a two-sided piece of paper containing some reflections on the liturgy to those present: this has been make available by Diane Montagna here. The liturgy had been among the four topics originally proposed for discussion at the meeting, but the cardinals decided to focus on just two, leaving the liturgy out. Cardinal Roche’s document was accordingly handed out without being formally discussed.

Versions were available in Italian and in English. The latter was clearly translated from the former, and not flawlessly: the Italian word sintonia, which means ‘harmony’, was rendered ‘syntony’ (para 4). It is surprising that an English Cardinal should have missed this howler, and it suggests that he didn’t write the document personally.

The argument of the text is not difficult to summarise. First, it makes historical argument that the liturgy has often developed: ‘The history of the liturgy … is the history of its continuous “reforming” in a process of organic development.’

This is linked, secondly, to the authority of the Second Vatican Council, at whose request the liturgy was reformed.

Thirdly, it repeats, with illustrations from the time of Pope Pius V, the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict, and Pope Francis, the claim that liturgical unity is necessary for the unity of the Church.

As a contribution to the debate sparked by Pope Francis’ Apostolic Letter restricting the Traditional Mass, Traditionis custodes, this represents a doubling-down rather than an attempt to engage with critics.