+ JMJ To say the least, my own family's discovery of Tradition was tumultuous. For some reason one of my older brothers was started on a path to search into what came before 1965. This led him to intense conversations with our parish priest. Ok, they were arguments and resulted in a veiled reference to him in a sermon. Our parish priest was a canon lawyer, had studied in Rome. Sprinkled throughout the Church were 'relics' of the Tridentine Mass. In the Sacristy you'd see the six altar candles. The original tabernacle was on a side altar (of which he'd kept two). Statues were everywhere, not completely out of sight, but out of mind. He kept the thurible. No girl altar servers were present in the sanctuary, nor were their lay Eucharistic ministers. The sermons were Catholic. When I was there for a funeral, Father preached on the Rosary. It made a deep impression on me and I still remember it as the best sermon on the Rosary that I had ever heard. Lookin...
+ JMJ Introduction Given the recent consecration of Bishops by the SSPX, I think there is benefit in looking at the basis for claiming that consecrating a bishop without pontifical mandate constitutes not just an act of disobedience but also a refusal of submission to the Pope and therefore an act of schism. The gap or rather chasm between: Consecration sans mandatum as in 1988 listed under the section "Usurpation of Ecclesiastical Functions and Delicts in Their Exercise" and in 2026 under Offenses against the Sacraments (2026) Canons 1013, 1382/ad1988 | 1387/ad2026 ) An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication (Offenses Against the Faith and the Unity of the Church (Canon 1364) I'm going to examine this gap and try to understand the principles the underpin how a person becomes a schismatic and cuts communion with the Church ... maybe along the way I'll also develop a deeper understanding of how a person becomes a ...