Dear Reverend Know-It-All,

I am very confused. I just read that the Pope, has lifted the excommunication of four bishops from the Society of Pius X and that one of the bishops, Bishop Williamson believes that the Nazis murdered only a few hundred thousand Jews, not the six million they claim. Why would the Pope lift the excommunication of a man like that?  I also heard that, because Pope John Paul II lifted the excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1995, we can receive communion in Orthodox churches and they can receive communion in Catholic churches. Some say this isn’t so. If we can’t go to communion in another church how can we be in communion?

I remain yours,  

Ann T. Smetic

Dear Miss Smetic,

I will give you the simple answer first, then the I will explain excommunication. Then I will deal with the Williamson silliness.

A) The simple answer:

There is such a thing as communion and full communion. The Patriarch and the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX, for short) are in communion, not full communion.  Most people use the term “communion” incorrectly.  The Latin word, “communion” which we fossilized clerics are still using, means “strong union, sharing in rights or privileges, or kinship.”  What you are receiving on Sunday, is the Eucharist, which is the sign sacrament of our  communion with God and one another. It is the outward sign of our complete unity.

The Catechism has this to say about full communion:

The Catholic Church sees itself as in partial, not full communion, with other Christian groups. "With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord's Eucharist." 

That is to say Catholics should not take communion in an Orthodox Church and Orthodox members should not take communion at a Catholic Church unless it is an extreme emergency. Brace yourself. This is only going to get more complicated.

B) What the heck is excommunication?

It is the honest admission that we do not have full union and kinship, and thus cannot share the same rights and privileges. When people are excommunicated, they may not participate in a leadership role in the Church, such as priest, lector, communion minister, pope or any other role of public leadership. They may not receive the sacraments of the Church which as you know, are sacred oaths. If I don’t believe what the Church holds and teaches, how can I pledge myself to Her and Her Lord by the most solemn oath possible? It would be a lie. Excommunication is about intellectual honesty, something of which most politicians are incapable. Theologians talk about “invincible ignorance.” In modern American politics that is a positive virtue. But that is a conversation for another day. Where was I?

C) What the heck is the Society of Saint Pius X?  In around 1968 some French seminarians in Rome approached Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the retired superior of the Holy Ghost Fathers, to ask for his help. They were traditional young men who felt they were being persecuted by their teachers for their love of the traditions of the Church. Let me share my own meager experience. I went to the seminary for twelve years and taught in it for another 25 years. I would like to emphasize that things are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER now than they were in the groovy seventies. You cannot believe the liturgical and theological wackiness of that era. Have you heard of clown Masses?  I am not making any of this up. At a clown mass  the celebrant dressed up in clown makeup, Bozo-esque  hair and nose, and probably a polka dot vestment, the whole shtik.  Much of the congregation dressed the same way. Balloons and joy buzzers could be used to highlight the festive nature of Christ’s death on the Cross, the presto-changeo trick of His resurrection and the vanishing act that was the Ascension. Whoopee.  The music might feature circus themes and songs from the musical “Godspell” were required. The words of  the Mass were, of course,  improvised.  That was just one aberration. We had Masses on coffee tables that tried to consecrate port and bagels, Mogen David and matzoh, and even, though rarely, coffee and doughnuts, because of course,  Jesus, were He alive today, would use coffee and doughnuts, being one of the common folk. The seminary hymnal contained such classics as that old offertory hymn, “Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine...”  It mentions wine, certainly a Eucharist theme. Then there were the communion hymns, ( I was there. I heard it. I am telling the truth,) “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I’ve got God in my tummy,” and “Come on, Jesus, light my fire.”

Seminarians were expelled for “excessive piety” and excessive Marian devotion, as evidenced by the frequent recitation of the Rosary. Again let me say things are much better. In the current seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Eucharistic and Marian devotion is encouraged by the public recitation of the Rosary and by Eucharistic Adoration on a regular and frequent basis, but had you told me in 1970 that those things would return around the year 2000, I would have laughed at you. My teachers would have evaluated you psychologically and then shown you the door.  That is the context in which the young French seminarians approached Archbishop Lefebvre.

Lefebvre tried to form a “pious union of the faithful” in order to welcome those who preferred the traditional liturgy. At first, the Vatican was receptive to his ideas, but some, especially his own fellow French Bishops opposed him, one cardinal going so far as to call him a fool.  Lefebvre began to ordain priests for his movement without approbation for his organization by the Vatican. As he saw death approaching, he ordained four of his followers as bishops to carry on the movement. To ordain or attempt to ordain bishops without papal approval results in automatic excommunication for the one ordaining and those being ordained, Though the society started as a reasonable  response to a bad situation, it seems to have become a magnet for a lot of unhappy people, some of whom are opposed to the French Revolution, some of whom believe the recent popes are invalidly elected, and some of whom may just be anti-Semitic.  

The Vatican opposes anti Semitism.  Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Committee for Christian Unity (sounds important, no?) is never quoted. He puts it succinctly when talking about Williamson’s denial of the Holocaust. “They are unacceptable words, stupid words. To deny the Holocaust is stupid and it is a position that has nothing to do with the Catholic Church.” So why would Pope Benedict be interested in having that bunch come back to the Church? Simple. The Church is a hospital for sinners, not an asylum for saints. If you are looking for a perfect institution, where only the righteous are welcome, perhaps you could join the Democratic Party of Illinois, but in the Church, we actually welcome sinners. We want them to repent, but we still welcome them. So that is what nasty old Ratzinger/Benedict is doing. He is inviting some lost brethren to come home. How shameful! Don’t God and the Pope know that there just are some sins which shouldn’t be forgiven, such as intolerance? Intolerance just should not be tolerated! (Perhaps you’ve heard me quote the old saw that “ there is no one so conservative as a liberal.”)

Allow me to quote Jonathan Movroydis who sums up the issue wonderfully. “By lifting the censure of ex-communication of their four bishops (ordained without Vatican approval in 1988), Pope Benedict is removing a legal–”canonical”–barrier for the bishops and their followers to return eventually to the fold, if they choose ( an essential condition for “rehabilitation” completely missed by the media).  But an invitation of this kind always comes with a condition: believe and obey what the Catholic Church authoritatively teaches on faith and morals, in conformity with the Gospel. This body of Church teaching would include the recognition of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) that officially and famously condemned all forms of anti-Semitism. The media missed completely this essential condition for “rehabilitation.”

There you have it. The Society of Saint Pius X is still unapproved by the Church. Its four bishops, including Williamson, are not bishops of the Catholic Church. They never were. What Pope John Paul II said to the Eastern Orthodox and Pope Benedict is saying to the Society of Saint Pius X is the basically the same, “We have things in common. Let’s talk. Unity is a good thing, if it’s honest.  The Pope isn’t saying “It’s all okay. Who am I to judge?” There are a whole troop of people who are out for blood, and they aren’t the Spanish Inquisition. It is the deep-as-puddle journalistic apparatus who hate the Gospel, the Good News. They have always hated it because they cannot make a living unless the news is bad.  If they would repent, we would even take them back.

Yours, as ever,

the Rev. Know it all