• Rome is offering us a new structure, a new body, to correspond precisely to our reality. 
  
• And what is our reality? There are priests, bishops, faithful, we have priors, schools, seminaries, and what Rome wants to do is to give us a structure that contains all this. Like a diocese.
  
• The name given to this reality is a personal prelature.
  
• But the reality is much better than what we find in canon law or what exists for the opus Dei. Because Opus Dei has no right to have a bishop. It is only at the Pope's pleasure to decide whether or not he gives him a bishop.
  
• For us, it is determined, it is written.
  
• At its head will be a bishop, chosen by the Pope from a list of three Society members, named by the Society.
  
• The Bishop will have authority over priests, over any religious wanting to join the new structure and over Catholics belonging to the new structure.
  
• It is also planned that the other bishops of the Fraternity will be auxiliary bishops in this Prelature. And everything that currently exists will be recognized worldwide.
  
• And the faithful too! They will be in this prelature with an absolute right to receive from Society priests all the sacraments and teachings, including marriage.
  
• The bishop will be able to set up schools and seminaries, to ordain (priests), to establish new religious Congregations.
  
• And it will also be possible to receive religious congregations, as in the dioceses: Capuchins, Benedictines, and all the others, Carmelites, everything.
  
• The structure will be like a super-diocese, independent of all local bishops. This is a Christian reality which is not under the authority of the bishops. It is autonomous. So, really, it's a very important thing."
  
• In other words, for you faithful, there will be no change from what you are already enjoying with the Society.
  
• The only difference will be that you will be officially recognized as Catholics.
  
• It is not a trap!  As things stand you cannot imagine anything better than this offer, which is such that you cannot think it is a trap. It is not a trap , and if anyone makes us such an offer it can only be because he wishes us well. He wants Tradition to prosper and to flourish within the Church. It is impossible that such an offer could come from our enemies. They have many other ways to crush us, but not that way.
  

• A “new structure, a new body” means that Archbishop Lefebvre’s structure
  for the Society will, essentially, be abandoned. Rome is creating a
  completely new entity. Good-bye, dear SSPX.
  
• A “bishop chosen by the Pope” is extremely important. And the head of the “new structure” will presumably go on being chosen by the Pope. Ask the Fraternity of St Peter what that means. It meant in the 1990’s their own choice of Superior General being overridden by Rome, so that Rome’s own choice was forcibly installed (Fr. A. D.), to bring St Peter’s to heel.
  
• Note also how this bishop will be able “to ordain (priests)” but not
  bishops. Rome will thus retain the whip-hand over the new entity.
  
• “There will be no change”? But of course there will! Rome will henceforth be in control.
  
• “You will be officially recognized” – but what Catholic needs any
  recognition by such destroyers of the Church from her present
  neo-modernist officials? Any such recognition can only be a bad sign.
  
• "You will receive the sacraments and teachings from the society priests"  But what Sacraments and teachings?  Already there are mergings of the traditional sacraments with the novus ordo and acceptances of Vatican II teaching.
  
• “Not a trap . . .”? This whole paragraph is truly remarkable."  Need say more?
  

• The new and entire 1983 Code of Canon law.
  
• The new Profession of faith by Vatican II.
  
• The legitimacy of the novus ordo "ordinary mass".
  
• "Lumen Gentium" of the Second Vatican Council [in part is to whole].
  
• "95% acceptance" of Vatican II.
  
• Vatican II “deepens” and “enlightens” certain aspects of Church doctrine.
  
• “Religious Liberty of the Council is limited”.
  
• “The errors of the Council are not really from the Council but from the general interpretation of it.”
  Vatican II Council is only “tainted with errors”.
  

Quote:"Obviously, most are not exactly sure what a prelature is or does.

...A prelature is not a reward. Do you really know the circumstances of a prelature? I would rather be an FSSP [Fraternity of St. Peter] than belong to a prelature.

A prelature is governed directly by the pope. The FSSP is not governed by the pope. They have their own superior general.

The prelature will have statutes and constitutions handed to it by the Vatican. Prelatures do not get to write their own statutes, as do societies of apostolic life and religious communities. The statutes are written at the Vatican, given to the prelate to comment, edited, if the prelate has something good to contribute and then sent to the pope for final approval. He issues the constitution of the prelature. The FSSP writers its own statutes, votes on them and sends a copy to the Sacred Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The Sacred Congregation reviews the constitution to ensure that it meets all the requirements of Canon Law and that there is no doctrinal error in it. The Sacred Congregation does not care if the constitution says that you will dance around the altar for morning and evening prayer, since such an action does not violate canon law, dogma or morals. They sign off on it and send it back to the Superior General of the FSSP. The SSPX will be in a closer relationship with the Holy Father, but it also has to make sure to cross its tees and dot its eyes.

The FSSP gets to elect its superior general. A prelature does not get to elect the prelate. The prelate is appointed by the pope. Remember the word, "personal prelature". The personal refers to the pope. You're stuck with the prelate that the pope appoints. He can appoint any bishop, not just an SSPX bishop.

The FSSP does not have to own property; therefore, it does not have to raise funds to maintain and insure their property. The FSSP hires itself out to a diocese or a religious community who provide the property. If the collection plate is not enough to fix the leaky rood, the owner of the proper, usually the diocese, will bail them out with a loan or just pick up the tab. The prelature owns all of its buildings and is financially responsible for them. It gets no financial support from the diocese. If it needs to borrow from a bank, the diocese does not serve as its cosigner.

The prelature can have its own seminary. So can the FSSP. No difference there.

The FSSP has to ask for permission to enter a diocese, so does the prelature.

The FSSP does not have ordinary jurisdiction over those who attend their mass or belong to their parish. That jurisdiction belongs to the bishop where the person resides. This is a good thing. The FSSP is not responsible for the salvation of their souls. If these folks follow the wide road, because the priest suggested it, the person goes to heaven, regardless of what he did, because he was obeying. The priest may not be so lucky and neither will the bishop for allowing it to happen, provided he knows. However, the FSSP is not accountable, only the priest involved. The prelature has ordinary authority over the laity. Guess who is morally responsible for the laity . . . bingo! The prelature, not the local bishop, not the FSSP.

The FSSP is a society of Pontifical Right. This means that it has the same right of exemption as I do. Bishops cannot discipline a member of the FSSP. The laity has no right to comment or voice an opinion on anything that happens with the FSSP, unless it directly affects them. Remotely does not count. Directly we mean that the FSSP priest is being ugly to you. If the FSSP priests decide to have happy hour every day, that does not directly affect the laity, even though it may be shocked. That's a problem for the superior of the FSSP. If the SSPX decides to have a happy hour and there are complaints, the prelate has to deal with them and he has to inform the pope. The superior general of the FSSP does not have to report to the pope, unless the pope calls him in.

A prelature is like a diocese without physical boundaries. It certainly has many other boundaries and a lot more oversight from the Vatican.

The key here is that if Pope [Francis] truly did say that this is the only way to come back into the Church and the SSPX rejects it, we may be facing a schism, depending on how the Holy Father takes the rejection.

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This is another misunderstanding. No community is allowed to refuse its members permission to celebrate the OF in principle. This was not just for the FSSP. The Franciscans of the Immaculate wanted to insert the same thing into their constitution and were told that it was unlawful to do so. The logic is that no community has the authority to command what the Church requires or prohibit what the Church allows in spiritual and sacramental matters. Even orders that have their own rite: Carmelite, Dominican, Carthusian and orders that have their own forms of the Latin Rite: Franciscan, Augustinian, Benedictine, Jesuit cannot prohibit the OF in the way that it is prescribed in the GIRM. What we are allowed to do is to decide that we will use this or that form for our conventual mass, not we cannot tell our priests that they cannot celebrate the OF. The conventual mass does not apply to the FSSP, because they are secular Catholics.

In the case of the EF, religious superiors and superiors of societies of apostolic life can prohibit it. Constitutions can prohibit it, because the EF is not the norm for the Latin Church as long as the pope says that it is extraordinary. The Pauline mass is the normal form of worship. Therefore, it cannot be prohibited. They can agree not to celebrate it. They cannot make it proper law. None of us can do that.

It was not the pope who intervened. It was the Sacred Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. All constitutions are reviewed by the Sacred Congregation to make sure that they do not violate law or doctrine. Many times, when people say, "The pope. . ." it's really a prefect acting in the name of the pope. Prefects have that authority.


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Q. Yes religious who are of pontifical right get to write their own constitutions and elect their superior yet both of those need the approval of the pope to go into effect.

A. Not quite. I'm a superior general and I know. The constitutions are reviewed by the Sacred Congregation for the reasons that I stated above. The Holy Father does not see them. When the Sacred Congregation agrees to approve the constitution, it sends a letter to the pope asking for his endorsement. All the letter says it that it has reviewed the constitution and found no doctrinal errors or canonical violations and it asks to pope to kindly promulgate the constitution. The pope signs the paper and sends it back. We get that paper sent back to us. Popes do not have time to read constitutions of religious communities or societies nor are they interested in doing so.

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The FSSP operates within the diocese; whereas the SSPX is its own jurisdiction. This presents a problem for things like getting married or placing your child in a Catholic school. In many places you must belong to the diocese and you must prove it with a letter from your pastor. An FSSP pastor can grant such a letter. The SSPX priest can only say that you belong to his congregation. But his congregation is under the jurisdiction of the SSPX, not the local bishop. The local bishop does not run that chapel.

====================================

The SSPX is being offered a prelature. A prelature gives it the autonomy that the SSPX wants, but it also restricts because its activities must follow a constitution given to it from the Vatican. It cannot write its own constitution, because it's a prelature, not community. There can be a constitution for the priests and religious, but those constitutions cannot contradict the constitution of the prelature.

A prelature has a defined apostolic mission that must be approved by the pope himself, not by a general chapter alone and not by one of the sacred congregations. We don't know how broadly or how narrowly Pope [Francis] will define the apostolic mission of the prelature.

Then we must look at size. The SSPX has about 500 secular priests, which is a very nice number. The average diocese has less than 300. Maybe the megadioceses have more. That looks good. However, those 500 priests are limited to working inside the prelature, not with diocesan structures. Therefore, they will not be allowed to participate in deanery meetings, diocesan synods, clergy councils or conferences of bishops where pastoral decisions are made. They will not be allowed to contradict those decisions made by the host diocese or the conferences of bishops. In other words, the SSPX can have its own pastoral practices within its jurisdiction, but it cannot tell the people of Diocese X that such and such a pastoral decision is a bad thing. They belong to the prelature.

Let's remember that 500 secular priests are a large number for a diocese, not for an international organization. The Salesians and the Franciscans each have more than one million members. How many Salesians or Franciscans are in the average diocese? My point is that we're thinking that the influence of these 500 men is going to turn the Church around. That's not realistic.

The Church will turn around and problems will be solved. New ones will replace the old ones. The SSPX will bring a much needed charism into the Church, but it will stand side by side with the many other charisms that exist in the Church, as it should be. The SSPX is not being regularized to compete with other secular priests or with religious communities. They are being regularized for their own good and for the unity of the Church.

We truly need to keep this in focus. Let's forget about ourselves and let's think about these men and the unity of the Church. My biggest problem with this whole process is the selfish attitude of some people. They're all excited because what they want and what they like is finally being regularized.

It is nice to get what we want and what we like. Make no mistake about that. But at the end of the day, the Church does provide for our spiritual and sacramental life, without the SSPX. What is of greater value here is that we have almost 1,000 men and women (clergy and religious) who are living outside the fence, but on the same side of the street. They are our brothers and sisters and we should love them enough to want them on our side of the fence where they will be safe and where we can share what each of us has to offer.

Finally, it is a great insult to the more than five million male religious and diocesan clergy to say to us that the SSPX are going to fix the Church, as if we had made no contribution for the good of the Church.

There has to be a balance in our thinking and a greater concern for the good of our brothers and sisters in the SSPX rather than our personal wants and wishes. As St. Francis said to our brothers, "The man who has not detached from his wants and wishes is like the man who cannot pass through the eye of the needle. He is still rich."

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The FSSP is a Society of Apostolic Life with Pontifical Right. It has the same legal rights and duties as I do, except that I belong to an order and we get more graces. But you can't regulate graces. You can regulate rights.

The charism of a society of pontifical right is not determined by the Holy See, nor does the Holy See impose limits on societies of pontifical right, quite the opposite. Pontifical right gives the FSSP what Trent defined as the Right of Exemption. Normally, this is only for religious men. But Pope John Paul II granted it to the FSSP. This gives it the freedom to write its own constitution, define its mission and charism, modify its mission and charism at any time and to be free from Church control. The only person who can dictate to a institute of pontifical right, is the pope. The only time in recent history that the pope has done this is with the Legionaires of Christ. That last time before that, was Pope Leo XIII when he founded the Franciscans (OFM). That was in 1878.

The FSSP is pretty free.. However its charism may have changed, it is completely under the control of the general chapter, not the Church. Only a pope can overrule a general chapter.

=======================

Once it [sspx] is regularized, it will have a canonical status and that means that it will also have rights. One of those rights is the right of its superior not to allow anyone to leave.

forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=683408&page=2

Quote:"2) In the August 2001 issue of Communicantes (former Canadian SSPX Magazine), there was published an interview conducted by Fr. de Tanouarn with His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay in which His Excellency spoke of a canonical structure proposed by Rome:

“You have no doubt heard talk of this idea of an apostolic administration. The Society of St. Pius X would have become incorporated into an apostolic administration. What does this signify? The apostolic administration ordinarily is a diocesan structure, or quasi diocesan, in a time of crisis, over a given territory. Well! For us this territory would be the entire world. In other words, they offered us a structure that covered the entire world, a kind of personal diocese…”

Q. Fr. de Tanouarn intervened:
“Excuse me for interrupting, Your Excellency, you mean a personal prelature…”

Bishop Fellay responded (this author’s emphasis in bold):
“Not at all. The apostolic administration is better than a personal prelature. In the first place, a personal prelacy is not necessarily governed by a bishop. An apostolic administration, which is quasi diocesan, normally would be. Furthermore, and above all, the action of an apostolic administration is not limited to its members. The Opus Dei, which is the personal prelacy that exists today, is not subject to the local bishop in all that concerns its members, but it could not consider any external action without the consent of the bishop. With the apostolic administration, we avoid this restriction. We would be able to take an autonomous apostolic action without having to ask authorization from the diocesan bishop, since we would have a veritable diocese, whose distinctive characteristic is that it extends to the entire world. It is very important that such a proposition has been made, because after all, this juridical solution has never happened before, it is ‘sui generis’. Now that it has been established, it can represent for us, from a juridical point of view, a reference, a position of comparison. Especially since it is to the Society of St. Pius X that this possibility has been proposed, which shows just how seriously Rome sees our resistance. It’s not by vainglory that I say that, believe me: symbolically (first of all, it’s not a question of numbers) we represent something very important for Rome, and this also is new.”

"3) In an interview conducted by Brian Mershon of The Remnant and published on February 18, 2009, His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay was posed the following question (my emphasis in bold):

Q. “Do you foresee any oversight by territorial diocesan bishops once the Society is regularized?”

His Excellency answered (this author’s emphasis in bold):
“That would be our death. The situation of the Church is such that once the doctrinal issues have been clarified, we will need our own autonomy in order to survive. This means that we will have to be directly under the authority of the Pope with an exemption. If we look at the history of the Church, we see that every time the Popes wanted to restore the Church, they leaned upon new strength like the Benedictine Cistercians whom the pope allowed to act as best as possible during the crisis, in a status of exemption, in order to overcome the crisis.”

Source: The Society of St. Pius X and the Diocesan Bishops www.therecusant.com/sspx-diocesan-bishops