This is a moment to seize.

Even before one reaches the Hildebrand question and the law we will explore more sincerely next time, there is a foundational prior question: Did Rome follow its own law when it claimed to punish others under that law?

Even some who are not friendly to the SSPX have begun asking whether the latest Vatican move actually does what the headlines claim it does. A recent canonical analysis at Rorate Caeli argues that the July 2 decree from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith names six bishops, not every SSPX priest and not every lay Catholic who attends an SSPX chapel. It also argues that the accompanying explanatory note cannot simply become a law, a penal decree, or a judicial sentence by sounding severe.

“Canon 18 demands strict interpretation of any instrument that imposes a penalty or restricts rights. Strict interpretation here means the instrument means exactly what it says; no more, no less, and ambiguity must be resolved in favour of the accused.”

Obviously this is not just a technicality. That is the whole issue. Catholics have been brainwashed into believing the electronic screen spitting out any Vatican news whatsoever as though the appearance of authority settles the question of lawful authority. It does not. There are protections against this that go back a long time, and precisely for times like this. A PDF, a press summary, a dicastery note, a headline, a tweet, or a loud and proud YouTube show does not become law merely because nervous Catholics are told to obey it.

A dear one and I have an expression for this: Everywhere you look, there are the type of people that are “Wrong and Strong.”

You swear they’re right. Otherwise, how on Earth would they speak with such confidence?

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But when the SSPX insists on Catholic doctrine, Catholic worship, Catholic priesthood, and Catholic Tradition—just as it always has, without working to declare a new church as schism implies—Rome suddenly remembers the notion of law.

That contrast should make every serious Catholic stop and say wait a minute….

Has anyone considered that the consecration on July 1 was the first of its kind since 1988? Does anyone know this was considered the last resort after numerous attempts to “dialogue” with Rome over the years? Does a 38-year gap in this type of action seem like an act of defiance worthy of labeling schism?

Do we even know what schism actually is?

If we did, we would be looking at Rome and the last 70 years instead of a famous talking head or uninformed priest’s post on the supposed schism of the SSPX.

I swear we would recognize this whole thing playing out in a movie and laugh hysterically at the characters being duped by such an obvious and longstanding hoodwink.

None of this means, remember, that the SSPX is automatically right in everything it does. It does not mean every argument the Society has ever made is sufficient. It does not mean consecrating bishops without papal mandate is a small act that shouldn’t be discussed in the way of education. Under ordinary conditions, it is grave. No Catholic should pretend otherwise.

But ordinary conditions are precisely what the SSPX has denied for decades, and even Rome before Leo XIV—if the sedevacantists are wrong about those claimants, of course—has repeatedly treated the Society’s sacramental life as something more complicated than simple schism.

And if the sedevacantists are indeed correct in their assertions, then truly the Society is even more heroic than anyone could have imagined.

And if you’re reading this having no idea what the sedevacantist position is, you really need to stop posting your opinion on the matter on Facebook or Twitter.

And that’s not even getting into what they’re allowing in China that most Catholics don’t know about either.

The Frame Is the Trap

The Society’s state-of-necessity argument has always been that Rome’s public crisis in doctrine, worship, and governance has created an extraordinary condition in which the preservation of Tradition requires extraordinary action. It is a theological and canonical claim about the salvation of souls in a crisis of authority.

YouTube and the alternative Catholic media ecosystem supposedly in it for our own good know how to present that arrangement for us. They always do. It is familiar, if not stale. It produces clips, reactions, denunciations, counter-denunciations, interviews, explainers, and the same old topics of Archbishop Lefebvre, 1988, excommunication, supplied jurisdiction, state of necessity, Vatican II, and the Latin Mass. They go round and round with it all. One guy even wrote a book on infiltration in the Catholic Church, got rich off of it, and is now acting like none of what he warned about applies to the Vatican anymore.

Again, if this were a movie…

None of this is irrelevant just because talking heads have made a circus out of it all, of course, and the circus itself should be illustration enough of the relevance. The root truths are still there. Infiltration still occurred, despite the mentioned author’s seeming amnesia. Catholics should know all of that. The recent crisis in the Catholic Church did not begin yesterday.

But familiar frames, like depending on your go-to podcaster to tell you what to think, can become cages, or caves as we’ve called them.

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Final Words

The question placed before Catholics right now is not at all simply whether the SSPX was right to consecrate bishops, or whether Rome was right to declare punishment. All you’re going to get if you stop there is tribal warfare that goes nowhere.

The deeper question—and truthfully I don’t see how that question hasn’t definitively been answered by every single Catholic out there—is whether the Catholic world is being trained, manipulated, once again to look at the conflict inside the limits created by a Vatican II spirit that has produced Francis and Leo, not to mention their “untouchable” predecessors, while avoiding the question of whether any of that spirit is lawful in the first place—whether any of that spirit is Catholic in the first place.

Traditionalists have their belief set on that discussion. There is no question for us that the postconciliar Church has veered away from true Catholicism. But most Catholics just choose to stay locked in the cave of double-mindedness, calling it humility and obedience, when in truth they just don’t want to leave behind their secular lives of fun and comfort.

When something really important happens they’ll tell me, they say. Somebody, or something… will let me know.

Or something.

This is not a tenable position. Catholics must read the law, not the headlines or memes. They must stop trusting the mob.

They must recognize the double-mindedness in the Vatican’s posture toward the SSPX in relation to their treatment of all other religions.

And they must see that the media framing has all the markings of a trap.

If Catholics don’t at least allow this possibility to unfold, based on what may very well prove to be false virtue and cowardice, an effeminate apathy to sincere investigation, they will not recognize that this may very well be another “look here, not there” moment in the insidious world of media.

Look here: SSPX consecrations.

Look here: What Leo and Fernandez are saying about it.

Look here: schism, excommunication, the same arguments, the same factions, the same YouTube rubbish, the same tribal reflexes.

Here:

Here:

Here:

Here:

But there: Hildebrand.

That is the issue not being answered, not being investigated, not even being respected. And that is where the next piece begins.