A Critical Review of G. Weigel: NCR - The SSPX Leadship Against Scripture and Tradition

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JMJ

Ok, when I first saw this article I picked out a number of flaws that made me a little giddy.  This caused me to consider pulling together some times for a more detailed review.

So ... here's my critical review of "The SSPX Leadership Against Scripture and Tradition.

For reference, Weigel is commenting on a shorter "Declaration of Catholic Faith Addressed to Pope Leo XIV" (link) and not the extensive one that followed "Profession of Catholic Faith of the Society of Saint Pius X to Enlighten Souls in the Face of Modern Errors" (link).

It would be interesting to see his response to the latter, but this one will suffice.

Source: National Catholic Register: The SSPX Leadership Against Scripture and Tradition

COMMENTARY: Even if the Society of St. Pius X hits the brakes at the last moment and doesn’t commit formally schismatic acts, the grave problem posed by the SSPX will continue.

• The Holy See has declared that, if the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) proceeds with the ordination of bishops in July without a papal mandate, those involved in these illicit ordinations are automatically (latae sententiae) excommunicated — that is, excommunicated by their own acts.  
• Tradicat: This is correct - at least partially (see Rorate-Caeli: Canonical Analysis: The 2026 DDF Decree on the SSPX)
• One may, indeed one should, hope that it does not come to that. But even if the SSPX hits the brakes at the last moment and doesn’t commit formally schismatic acts, the grave problem posed by the SSPX will continue. 
• Tradicat: Interesting turn of phrase "the grave problem posed by the SSPX"? What exactuly would this 'grave problem' be???  A congregation that, while not in full communion, holds on to the pre-conciliar Church Teaching and rejects that which contradicts it?  
• That was made rather clear by the May 14 “Declaration of Catholic Faith Addressed to Pope Leo XIV,” in which the SSPX leadership declares, wittingly or not, that it does not share the faith of the Catholic Church. 
• Tradicat: That is interesting given all the history, doctrinal discussions etc. If the SSPX can be proven to adhere to what has been taught
• Take the Declaration’s very first sentence, in which the SSPX declares that “Our Lord Jesus Christ … rendered the Old Covenant definitively null and void.” That would have shocked St. Paul who, wrestling with the tangled question of the relationship between Israel’s election and the New Covenant incorporating the Gentiles into God’s plan of salvation, wrote, under divine inspiration, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Romans 9:4). Not “belonged,” but “belong.”  
• Tradicat: The Church has taught othewise.
• Council of Florence Bull Cantate Domino (link): We ... have delivered in the name of the Lord in this solemn session, with the approval of this sacred ecumenical council of Florence, the following true and necessary doctrine... 
• It firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning.
•  Mystici Corporis (link): 
• And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area — He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel 30 -the Law and the Gospel were together inn force; 31 but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, 32 fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, 33 establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. 34 “To such an extent, then,” says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, “was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.” 35
• 30. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, 36 in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers;37 ...
• 32. If we consider closely all these mysteries of the Cross, those words of the Apostle are no longer obscure, in which he teaches the Ephesians that Christ by His blood made the Jews and Gentiles one “breaking down the middle wall of partition . . . in his flesh” by which the two peoples were divided; and that He made the Old Law void “that he might make the two in himself into one new man,” that is, the Church, and might reconcile both to God in one Body by the Cross. 40
• Two chapters later, Paul insists that “as regards election they [the Jewish people] are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28-29). God does not repent of his promises, and the Old and New Testaments form a unity, as the Church has consistently affirmed for two millennia. The SSPX Declaration denies this.  
• Tradicat: The SSPX simply repeats Church Teaching. If the author is uncomfortable with the Teaching, that is not the fault of the SSPX.
• The Declaration goes on to claim that “every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as a means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists.” SSPX hell is thus quite well populated, and includes your Lutheran, Anglican, Jewish, Muslim, and non-believing friends and relatives.  
• Tradicat: I truly hope that the author knows how the Church and SSPX understand this Dogma.
• This, however, is precisely the extreme distortion of the old maxim extra ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation outside the Church) for which Father Leonard Feeney was excommunicated in 1953, the theological ground for that sanction being laid by a 1949 statement of the Holy Office approved by Pope Pius XII.   
• Tradicat: The distortion is in the mind of the author - the SSPX adheres to the full teaching not just the sound bite. For a fuller expression of this teaching as the Church and SSPX understand it see SSPX Profession of Faith PDF (with reference).
• Ironically, the SSPX Declaration affirms that “the denial of even a single truth of the Faith destroys faith itself and renders radically impossible all communion with the Catholic Church.” Yet that is precisely what the SSPX does in declaring God’s promises to the Jewish people “definitively null and void” and by giving the most extreme possible interpretation to extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The SSPX thus contradicts the teaching of such giants as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, the papal condemnations of Jansenism, and the teaching of Blessed Pius IX in Quanto Conficiamur Moerore on the availability of grace beyond the sacraments.   
• Tradicat: Does the SSPX provide interpretation? It seems to be that the author is trying to fill in and support his own beliefs in this case.
• It has long been obvious that the root of the movement begun by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which continues today in the SSPX, was not simply the archbishop’s rejection of the post-conciliar liturgy, but a rejection of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the Church, salvation, religious freedom, Church-state relations, and the Church’s relationship to other religions. In this connection, it should be remembered that Archbishop Lefebvre was a supporter of Marshal Henri Petain and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: a regime that rejected modernity root and branch. Elements of Vichy eventually careened into a lethal antisemitism that grew in part from the rejection of Romans 9-11 that the SSPX Declaration also rejects. To raise even the faintest echo of that tawdry history amidst today’s antisemitic outrages is, to put it gently, frighteningly obtuse. 
• Tradicat: Given the lack of real evidence the author has recourse to guilt by association / ad hominem attacks.  I guess the lacking of real and relevant information forces him into this absurdity.  Anyone with a familiarity knows that first and foremost this was always a conflict about doctrine. The New Mass came afterwards and was set aside due to its embodiement of the doctrinal issues in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
• In May, a distinguished Italian historian noted, with reference to the episcopal ordinations the SSPX intends to carry out and the excommunications that will automatically follow, that “what is set to happen in July will not be the building of a bridge but the creation of a new chasm between [the SSPX world] and the Holy See.” True enough. That will only happen, however, if the 700+ priests, 200+ seminarians, and hundreds of thousands of laity involved in the SSPX continue to acquiesce, cult-like, in the heterodoxy of the SSPX leadership, whose claim to be the only true Catholics is what will detonate ecclesial bridges and create whatever sorry chasms follow. The people who find spiritual nourishment in SSPX Mass centers deserve better than that. 
• Tradicat: Interestingly, the heterodoxy is imagined and I do wish the author would provide a point by point rebuttal to the more detailed Profession of Faith cited above.
• George Weigel is the distinguished senior fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

After all that, I'm not certain how his academic and writings make him an authority.  His main claim seems to continue to be that he wrote the biography of Pope St. John Paul II. Nothing academically notable in theology etc.  Of course, I do not have a degree in theology, yet I can still study, draw conclusions and write.

P^3