What SSPX Supporters and Critics Each Get Wrong

[00:00:02] The upcoming SSPX episcopal consecrations have revealed the woeful state of Catholic catechesis, both from its critics and its supporters. Hello, I'm Eric Sammons, and welcome to Crisis Point. [00:00:30] Okay, I know the thing to do these days is you have to take a side. You have to defend it above all else. And you can't say anything nice about the opposing side. You can't say anything negative about your own side. You just have to do that. I know that's the way of the world. If you are a supporter of Trump, you can't say anything negative about him. You can only say bad things about people like Obama or Biden and vice versa. We all know that that's just the way it is. That's how you get clicks, that's how you get noticed. I think that's just the way people think these days. [00:01:05] I just won't do it. I just simply can't do it. I find that I'm just a person who will find the good and the bad, the errors and the correct things on every side. Now, obviously, I take sides. I'm not like, you know, I'm not just sitting on the fence all the time. But even on, quote, unquote, my side, I'm going to have criticisms of some. Some people. And. And honestly, there are some things that you're not fully on one side or the other, and that's okay. It's not like we're required to take a adamant stance on every single thing under the earth. [00:01:43] Which leads me to, of course, the whole Society of St. Pius X situation. [00:01:49] If you ask me what side I'm on, I would probably say the Society, but I'm not a. I don't attend a Society parish, never have. I have some real criticisms of the Society, yet if you make me pick a side, I would say, okay. The Society in general, I think, has done good work, and generally it's right in its arguments. In general, it's been treated poorly by the Vatican, all that stuff. [00:02:15] But if you ask me another way, which side am I on? Obviously, I'm on the Vatican side in the sense that I'm a member of the Catholic Church. [00:02:23] I don't identify as a member of a society. St. Pius X Chapel. And so it's kind of my side, even when I think they're wrong about stuff. So I just. I wanted to preface everything I say here by that, because I do think we have the problem in our modern world that we just simply cannot think critically and recognize that sometimes people who aren't, quote, Unquote, on our side have good arguments and some times people on our side have bad arguments. So, okay, I want to, I want to highlight two situations like this where critics of the SSPX are woefully wrong. I mean, even falling into, I would say, heresy, and where supporters, the SSPX do the same thing, but with another issue, they literally fall into heresy. [00:03:14] Okay, so let me bring up the first one and I actually have an article at Crisis magazine. It was published yesterday, Thursday the 18th of June, and it's about the issue of Outside the Church, no Salvation. [00:03:26] But I decided to write this based upon an article that George Weigel wrote and he wrote it against the SSPX and he was accusing the SSPX Declaration of Catholic Faith they put out about a month or so ago. [00:03:40] He basically accused it of being heretical. Yet in doing so, and honestly, I think this was an, it's like any opportunity to own the triads in Weigl's view is a good one, even if it means he's going to be sloppy with his own theology to the point of that he himself is heretical. So George Weigel, he writes, let me put up on the screen here. [00:03:59] The declaration goes on to claim that, quote, 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. End quote. [00:04:19] Weigel continues, SSPX Hell is thus quite well populated, includes your Lutheran, Anglican, Jewish, Muslim and non believing friends and relatives. [00:04:28] This, however, Weigel continues, is precisely the extreme distortion of the old maxim, ex ecclesiam nulla sullis, no salvation outside the Church for which Father Leonard Feeney was excommunicated in 1953. The theological ground for that sanction being laid in a 1949 statement of the Holy Office approved by Pope Pius XII. [00:04:51] Now this really riled me up because this is an area, I mean, at the risk of just sounding immodest, it's an area of expertise for me. I wrote a book, Deadly Indifference, where I talk about this issue a lot and weigel gets this 100% wrong. I mean, he just is completely wrong. I mean, just some factual things. Like, for example, Father Feeney wasn't excommunicated for his actual doctrinal beliefs, it was for disobedience. I think Father Feeny did have incorrect doctrinal beliefs, but let's just get the facts right. But Weigel Basically is saying that any robust understanding of outside the church and of salvation is essentially wrong. That if you think Muslims and Jews and Lutherans and Protestants are in hell, oh my gosh, we don't do that anymore. That's not what the Catholic Church thinks anymore. [00:05:48] That's basically what Weigel is saying there, and he's completely wrong. The church is not saying that, okay, it doesn't even matter if you're Catholic, which is what Weigel is basically implying here. [00:05:58] And that we don't want to talk in scary terms of like maybe non Catholics might be in hell. [00:06:04] That's simply not church teaching. Church teaching is, it's a church dogma that outside the church there's no salvation. And the SSPX way of explaining this. Let me read it again. [00:06:15] Every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul. And there's but one baptism as a means of being incorporated into her. [00:06:23] This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception, embraces without distinction. Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans and atheists. That is 100%, 100 Catholic teaching. There is nothing about that that is contrary to Catholic teaching. [00:06:39] Now some might say, well, you know, what about where he said, where it says there's but one baptism as a means being incorporated into her. [00:06:46] What about martyrs? What about, you know, people who baptism and desire something like that that is incorporated into the one baptism, as the society themselves have made clear. They have rejected what I would call the, you know, what you could call the Feni interpretation. And that is, by the way, the idea. We can debate exactly what Feeney thought, but the basically what's condemned by the church is the idea that only through water baptism can someone be saved. [00:07:13] In other words, if somebody is martyred for the faith and they're not baptized, they haven't been water baptized yet, then they would be damned. It's not Catholic Church teaching. In fact, Catholic Church teaching is that's a baptism of blood. [00:07:25] It's part of the one baptism that, that unites you to Christ and so those people can be saved. Likewise, there is a baptism of desire that, that has existed. That idea has existed since the early church. [00:07:38] The problem though, of course, is people like Weigel have opened that up so much that that loophole, so to speak, open up so much you could drive, you know, everybody in the world in through it. [00:07:50] The reality is, if you look at church history throughout the history until about the 1950s, 1960s, most Catholics thought of baptism and desire as a exception that proves the rule in the sense that it's very unlikely that most people would fall under that. And it would be for people like maybe a catechumen who was in classes on their way to Easter vigil and gets hit by a truck. That person would fall under baptism of desire. [00:08:19] But just some random person in Asia who is like a Buddhist or whatever doesn't mean they're all of a sudden have baptism desire so we don't have to worry about them. That's never been the Church's teaching, never been the Church's praxis either. Because if you look at how we sent missionaries around the world in order to convert people like that Buddhist. [00:08:42] And so Weigel, in his effort, like I said, to, to own the trads, own the sspx, he himself falls into air. And by the way, I've noticed other critics of the SXPX who would join with Weigel and criticizing sspx. They, they agree that Weigel's completely off here, that he's very sloppy here. He's, he's accusing the SSPX of something they don't believe. But more importantly, he's acting like that statement that the SSPX made is somehow outside of Church teaching when it actually aligns directly with Church teaching. Now, I know a lot of Catholics, including many Catholic higher ups and leaders and such over the past 60 years, have talked about it, such that they would open up heaven to everybody no matter whether or not they cared about Catholicism, knew about Catholicism, embrace Catholicism or anti Catholic, doesn't matter. They're all anonymous Christians that we just let in. [00:09:36] So Weigel definitely gets this wrong. And this is, and I've seen this, that I've seen others, critics of the SSPX who are basically trying to accuse the society now of heresy, which is just silly and isn't, isn't accurate at all. We could have a debate about schism. I mean, I think there's at least a discussion to be had there, but not when it comes to heresy. The Declaration of Catholic Faith was completely in keeping with Catholicism as it's always been understood. And so Weigel gets this wrong. What I'm really disappointed though, in with this Weigel column is that a number of outlets, media outlets, I don't like to bang on other media outlets like our competitors, so to speak, of Christ. I don't really consider them competitors. I think they do good work. [00:10:22] But I feel like I have to say something here. [00:10:25] I'm disappointed that a number of otherwise good Catholic outlets published this. [00:10:32] First Things published it, Catholic World Report published it, and National Catholic Register published it. Now, let me explain how Weigel columns work. I know this from the inside because I'm part of this world. [00:10:44] What happens is Weigl's representative sends out an email about a week or so to before the column is to be published with the column contents and says, okay, here's Weigl's latest column. Don't publish until June 17, for example. And usually it comes by a week in advance. And then what you're supposed to do is if you publish it, you then send him an honorarium. They actually are pretty. It's like an honor system. You could publish without paying him a dime. But the idea is you then pay him, because you should. And you should pay him if you run it. I mean, that's the way it works. We pay all our authors at Crisis, and every outlet should pay their authors who write for them. [00:11:19] Well, a long time ago, like when I first started at Crisis, this is five years ago, I started getting these emails, and I asked the previous guy who ran Crisis, Michael Warren Davis, like, what are these? Am I supposed to run these or what? He's like, oh, no. They just send them out to all the different Catholic media outlets and ask them to run it. You're not obligated to it. So, of course I was like, I'm not going to run Weigel articles. First of all, they're being run everywhere else at Crisis. We try to have, you know, unique content that's only run at Crisis. We don't. We don't run things that are run elsewhere. But also, honestly, I'm not a big fan of Weigel because of things like this. I think he's often. [00:11:54] I think he's condescending, and he's often very theologically sloppy. And so I was like, no. And at one point, though, I had a tiff with Weigel because I criticized him for his support of the Ukrainian war, I think it was, or something like that, back in 2021 or 2022, whenever that was. And he and I had a back and forth, and I basically asked his person, his representative, could you please take me off the list? I don't want to receive these emails anymore because I'm not going to run them. Don't. Don't waste your time. Well, they kept sending them to me. And I asked again, could you please stop sending these to me? I'm not going to run Weigel's articles. I just delete these. So stop sending them. Well, they just kept sending them to me. They just didn't take me off the list. [00:12:34] And so I saw this a week ago, and I almost publicized it before the embargo was up because I'm like, I'm not obligated by the embargo since I asked you not to send these to me. But I was like, no, I'll wait. But that's why I had an article the next day after Weigel's article ran, because I knew about it for over a week. [00:12:50] But the point is, the National Catholic Register, the Catholic World Report, and First Things who are all good outlets, they didn't have to run Weigel's article. [00:13:00] They should check what he writes before they run it. And in this case, they shouldn't have run it, frankly. I know they're going to get a lot of clicks because it's about the sspx. But at the same time, it literally has, I think, an endorsement of a heretical understanding of Catholic teaching in it in the example I gave. [00:13:20] So, yeah, so there's an example where I think critics of the SSPX get. Get things wrong. They actually fall into heresy in this case because they embrace, because they're just so desperate to show that. That the society is wrong. [00:13:36] Now, on the flip side, let me give an example of the supporters of the SSPX falling into what I think is heresy. [00:13:46] Now, I cause quite a kerfuffle on X, which, let's be honest, we know X isn't the real world. It doesn't really matter that much. [00:13:56] Excuse me. And, and most people aren't going to be aware of this, but I caused a little bit of a. Of a big deal because I posted this and let me put it up on the screen. I said I would go to confession to Father James Martin before I go to a priest of whom I was unsure if he had faculties, no matter how orthodox traditional he may be. That's not legalism, but basic Catholic sacramental theology. By the way, I do want to make a note. That last line, I realized, sounds totally AI Generated. It's not this, but it's that. And I. And I kind of cringe now reading it. I did not use AI to write that expose. I think it'd be weird that use AI for that. I mean, I think it's weird to use AI to write articles, things like that, but definitely not exposed. But anyway, the point is I was making, which hopefully is clear, is that I think it's important that a priest has faculties in order to go to confession. And if I'm unsure, I'm not going to go to them. And this is the Point, I made my last podcast simply that. [00:14:55] Notice, I did not say, I did not say an SSPX priest here because as of today, SSPX priests have faculties to hear confessions, and so therefore it doesn't include them. But I am talking about the possibility that the Pope might rescind their faculties. And if that were the case, I would go to a. [00:15:17] I would go to Father James Martin before I go to an SSPX priest without faculties given to them by Rome. [00:15:25] And I wrote a later post that I explained this in more detail. [00:15:29] And I think people just don't understand some basic sacramental theology and canon law, first of all. And it is confusing. And by the way, I'm not even trying to be condescending here. I'm not trying to be George Waggle about this, because it is, I do think it's confusing. I found a lot of Catholics don't understand this. [00:15:44] For a sacrament to be valid in general, it has to have the proper form, the proper matter, and the proper minister. [00:15:52] And so, for example, with baptism, the proper form is I baptize you in the Father's name of Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The proper matter is. And also that you pour. The proper matter is water, and that you pour water over the skin of the, of the person's head, at least, or dunk them. [00:16:09] The proper ministry actually in the case of Baptism is anybody. [00:16:12] And in the case of something like the Eucharist, the proper, you know, we know, proper form, proper matter, but the proper minister is a validly ordained priest. [00:16:23] And so every sacrament has, has to have proper form matter minister. And so, for example, for confession, proper minister is a validly ordained priest. Again, it's not somebody like me. I can't hear confessions, thank God. [00:16:36] But there's also, in some cases, the minister has to have jurisdiction supplied to him by the proper authority in the Church. And this applies to both confession and to marriage. [00:16:53] And I'm not going to go all in the details why that's the case. You can research that, ask Claude or whoever. [00:17:00] But the reality is that these sacraments, confession and marriage, need the priest to have proper jurisdiction supplied to him by the proper authority. [00:17:09] And so what the debate is with SSPX priests is do they have proper, do they have jurisdiction? [00:17:19] Now, the argument on the Society of St. Pius X side is that they do have jurisdiction, even if this is before. So, okay, let me take another step back. [00:17:31] Historically, from the time of the excommunications in 1988, the thought was at the Vatican and among most Catholics is that the priest did not have the SSPX priests did not have jurisdiction because the Vatican had basically excommunicated the bishops and they were not under a diocesan bishop. Therefore they did not have faculties granted to them by the diocesan bishop to hear confessions. Now in 2015, I think that's the year Pope Francis actually granted all society priests jurisdiction. And so as of today, that still stands. And therefore in the eyes of everybody who's paying attention, society priests have jurisdiction. [00:18:15] However, the Society would argue from the beginning, from 1988 through 2015, that they did have supplied jurisdiction. And there's a number of different arguments. It has to do with. [00:18:27] It has to do with like people coming to them, whether or not they believe that they, that, you know, it's a coming for spiritual need. You know, you could argue from state of necessity. There's different arguments for. I'm not going to get into details now. Again you could, you could go to Society website at. I'm sure it's on there somewhere. Ask Society priest, ask Claude, I'm sure or whoever in AI would probably explain it well as well. I'm not going to get in that here. I'm not going to bore with the details. The point is there is a dispute. [00:18:55] The Society would argue even if the Pope were to rescind their faculties, they would still have supplied jurisdiction and therefore their confessions would be valid. The Vatican and many other Catholics would argue no, they don't have jurisdiction because it's clear the Pope, the Pope hasn't given it to them, therefore they don't have their confessions are not valid. [00:19:16] Now my point is when I say, and what did I say again? I would go to confession to Father James Martin before I go to a priest of whom I was unsure if he had faculties, no matter how orthodox traditional he may be. Note, I'm not saying he doesn't have faculties. I'm saying I'm unsure of it. [00:19:33] And for me personally, I'm not saying, by the way, other people what their certainty is. I'm simply saying if I were, and I use this example in another post on X, if I were to say to mortal sin today, or let's say after, let's say the Pope withholds rescinds jurisdiction from the faculties from the SSPX priest in a month from now, and I'm in a state of moral sin, I go into a church to get confession and Father James Martin is one in one confessional and a Society priest is another confessional, I would go straight to the line for Father James Martin and that freaked, man. It just blew people's mind. But I honestly, I didn't think it was that controversial to say that. Of course I pick Father James Martin on purpose because everybody should know my opinion of him. I think he's a terrible priest. I think he's leading many souls to hell. [00:20:25] But I would pick him over society priest. Not because I think he's holier, not because I think he's more orthodox or more traditional. I don't think any of those things are true. [00:20:36] Yet I would pick him because of sacramental theology. [00:20:40] I would be in doubt as to whether the society priest, the confession were valid. If I'm in a state of moral sin, I want to be sure, as sure as I can. Obviously we can't be 100% sure ever. [00:20:54] We could go into a confessional of a priest who actually wasn't badly baptized. And this is happening. And so of his sacraments he celebrates are valid can happen. Claiming it can. I'm just simply saying responsible for what I know. [00:21:10] And I, I would sure I would doubt the validity of the confession from the Society of St. Pius X because I'm not convinced by the Society arguments for supply jurisdiction. [00:21:23] I know other good Catholics who are, and I'm not saying even that they're wrong. I'm just simply saying I am not convinced. So if I'm not convinced, I'm not putting my soul in jeopardy of potentially going to an invalid confession. I'm going to go to the Father James Martin valid confession. Now, what led this into heresy? I think of many SSPX supporters. [00:21:47] I don't think, by the way, the, the, you know, XSPX priest would, I don't know, I don't think they would say that Father James Martin confession is invalid. But I saw a number of people online saying it was. Why? Because he's a heretic. Here's the logic. Father James Martin is a heretic. A heretic is automatically excommunicated. Excommunicated priests cannot hear valid confessions. You know, A, B, C, D. That's the argument, that's the logic. However, that just isn't how it works. That is not how it works. And it's been clear from the teaching and the practice of the church for almost 2,000 years. [00:22:23] The church has made it very clear over and over and over again that, that the sacrament celebrated by a priest who may be a heretic or may engage in many more immoral activities is still valid. It is still valid. Why? Because I know canon law says if you're a heretic, you're automatically excommunicated. The problem is, is that I don't have the authority and you don't have the authority to declare Father James Martin a heretic. And therefore he's excommunicated. [00:23:02] And so therefore his. His sacraments are still valid. If he were excommunicated formally by the Church for heresy, yes, then we'd have an issue. Now, by the way, not all the sacraments would be invalid. Even excommunicate priests can celebrate a valid Mass. Again, it's to do with jurisdiction. An excommunicated priest can't hear valid confessions because he wouldn't have jurisdiction anymore. However, his Mass would still be valid. It would not be licit, but it would still be valid. I know this would be confusing. There's a lot of distinctions here, but we. It's important that we keep them straight. [00:23:37] Also, he just to confuse things a little bit more. [00:23:40] In a state of true emergency, for example, I get hit by a bus and I'm in danger of death and I'm in a state of moral sin, I want to confess. And a laicized priest, a priest who, for example, left the priesthood and got married, he can validly hear my confession in that case, because it's the same emergency. It's one of the arguments, not the only one, but it's one of the arguments of The Society of St. Pius 10th Defenders is we're in a state of emergency kind of generally. So therefore that makes confession is valid. I know they also have a different argument with supplied jurisdiction that's a little bit. That's different than that, but that's one of them you hear. [00:24:17] So we have all these different situations. But what I do know is right now there is no reason to doubt, frankly, the validity of the confession of somebody like Father James Martin or maybe a bishop like Cardinal cupich or Cardinal McElroy, somebody we don't like and we know is really problematic. [00:24:39] Think about the alternative. If what I'm saying is not true, if what I'm saying is not true, that if ipso facto, a. A priest holds heretical beliefs, therefore he is automatically excommunicated, therefore his sacraments are invalid because he doesn't have jurisdiction. If that were true, it upends the entire sacramental system. It definitely upends at least the entire sacramental system behind confession, because you can't know. [00:25:07] I actually asked somebody online. [00:25:10] Okay, so we all agree. I think we, you know, at least he and I would agree that many priests today, maybe even most probably, hold some heretical beliefs. They probably do. [00:25:23] Does that mean their confessions are invalid? Because obviously they're excommunicated, according to you, and therefore the confessions are invalid. And he basically said, yeah, probably, think about that. Think about the consequences. This is why the Church has said, by the way, that even if a priest holds some heretical views, his. [00:25:41] His confessions are still valid if he has faculties. [00:25:45] That means you have reason to doubt almost every confession you've ever been to. [00:25:52] I mean, because you don't know for sure, no matter how awesome you think the priest is, you're going to for confession. You don't know if perhaps he holds some radical views. [00:26:03] I'm willing to bet there's a society priest or two that holds heretical views. I'm willing to bet that There's a fraternity St. Peter Priest or two that does. I'm willing to bet, you know, I just. It's not that hard, sadly, to hold some heretical views. [00:26:20] And I bet there are some priests, more likely not traditional priests, that hold some really heretical views, especially in progressive priests. [00:26:30] Yet their confessions are not invalid, assuming they have faculties. And that's because ultimately, when you go to confession, who are you going to. You're not going to a priest. [00:26:44] You're not getting absolved by his power. [00:26:47] You're getting absolved by Jesus Christ himself working through that priest. [00:26:53] And how does he work through the priest? Through the Church. The Church is his body. Therefore, unless the Church says that priest doesn't have faculties, he does. [00:27:05] And if the Church excommunicates, formally excommunicates a priest, then, yeah, he doesn't have faculties anymore. And if the Church says that society priests do not have faculties for confession, what does that mean? [00:27:21] I think it's. I think it means they don't have faculties for confession. I at least doubt that they have faculties for confession. And therefore I wouldn't go to them unless I were in danger of death. [00:27:32] That's me. [00:27:33] I'm not telling people what to do. You can decide for yourself if you attend the society. If you're a Society of Saint PI X attendee, you go to the chapels and you think they're still valid, you're sure of it? Okay, that's your conscience. That's what you have to decide in your conscience. And you will have to answer for at the final judgment, Jesus might very well say, yes, you were right. [00:27:56] But I know for me, on my conscience, I can't do that. I wouldn't be able to do that. And so that's why I would go to a society. I'M sorry, to go to Father James Martin. [00:28:06] I mean, the funny thing is going to Father James Martin for confession. [00:28:10] What it demonstrates is the mercy of God and the power of God that he works through these fallible, unworthy priests. [00:28:22] I guarantee you every holy priest you know would say he is unworthy to hear confessions and to give absolution, yet he knows he has confidence that Christ works through him. [00:28:35] And so I really do think we need to get these things straight. We need to understand we can't, like some of the critics of sspx, start accusing them of heresy and basically embracing heresy ourselves to do so. Nor can we, if we support the sspx, which I would say I'm in that general group, can we then say that, okay, embrace heresy and start saying things like, oh, if a priest is. If I know a priest has some heretical thoughts, I know his confessions are invalid. That's just. That's ridiculous. That goes. It's the Donatist heresy. Yes, I know people don't like hearing it called that, talk about that, but that is what it is, the d. Heresy. The idea of a, A. [00:29:15] A priest kind of loses his ability to, say, celebrate valid sacraments because of his unworthiness. [00:29:23] Okay, So I just want to. I wanted to talk about that, but I also want to follow up on that a little bit more. The faculties issue. [00:29:33] As of today, June 19, 2026, society priests do have faculties because of Pope Francis. [00:29:41] They do have. And Topplio has not rescinded them. [00:29:44] Now, after the, The. [00:29:47] The consecrations, episcopal consecrations on July 1, we don't know what's going to happen, but there are probably, I would think, maybe three or four different options. One is he could excommunicate the bishops, but he could not rescind the faculties of the priests. I hope he makes it very clear what he's doing here, by the way, because the priests of the society did not have faculties before 2015, according to the Vatican. [00:30:18] And so after this, he could. So he could excommunicate the bishops involved so the men being consecrated and the bishops consecrating them. He could excommunicate them but allow society priests still to have faculties. That is one possibility. Another possibility is he excommunicates the bishops involved, both consecrating and consecrated, and he removes the faculties of all society priests. He makes it clear all the faculties for confession and marriage are rescinded from society priests. Now, of course, society would still defend, say, they have supplied jurisdiction. They're still valid. Okay, fine. [00:30:54] Another option, the Pope could Do. He could excommunicate the bishops involved consecrated and consecrating and also all the priests of the society. [00:31:05] There is talk that he might do something like this. [00:31:07] If he did that, then they would not have faculty, obviously, because they're excommunicated, they don't have jurisdiction. Now, again, I know Society say they still do. The point is, I'm saying from the Vatican point of view, so that's another option. He could, the Pope could even go further and excommunicate people who attend. Society say it's an, it's an act of automatic communication. If you attend an SSPX chapel. I don't know. I mean, I, I really don't think he would do that, but I think everything's on the table right now. Now, I do think what I think is more likely to happen than anything is he's going to do something, but it's not going to be done clearly and, and, and completely in conformity with canon law. [00:31:50] Because that's just the way the Vaticans worked over the past 15 years or so is they do these things kind of haphazard. They don't really care about the details. I hope whatever they do, it's very much in line with canon law. I hope, I hope that's it, because that otherwise it just gets to be a mess. And, and I could see the SSPX appealing because they would want their day in court and they deserve their day in court, by the way, if they're excommunicated by the Pope, they have every right to appeal it to the Pope. Obviously. I mean, there is no appeal beyond the Pope, but at least to appeal under canon law to say, could you please look into this more carefully? And here's our arguments for why. And again, you know, the sea is judged by no one. The Roman See is judged by no one. So I'm not saying you could appeal to somebody else, but at least appeal to the Vatican. [00:32:38] You know, priests, bishops have that right in general. [00:32:41] So we have to pray and fast that, that, that honestly, this mess just gets fixed. [00:32:49] I mean, there's no better way of putting it. [00:32:52] I made very clear. I think the Vatican has treated SSPX horribly over the years. I also am clear that I think the, that the Pope should, should allow the consecrations, approve the consecrations, just say, yes, you can do it. We're not going to, we're not going to stop you and we're going to, and we're not going to do anything. We're not going to excommunicate you. It doesn't look like that's what he's going to do, but I'm still praying for a miracle that he would do that. That would solve a lot of problems, and I think it is the right thing to do. [00:33:18] You know, obviously, the SSPX could back down. They could say, no, we're not going to. Actually, we're going to. We're not going to back down. [00:33:27] We're going to try to talk more to the Vatican, or we don't think we need the bishops right now or whatever the case may be. That's also a possible thing. And maybe they should do that. If the Pope won't back down, Maybe they should back down. [00:33:40] Actually, I say I think they should. I don't think they should consecrate on July 1st if they're not allowed, if they're not approved by the Pope. [00:33:47] But there's a lot of different things that could happen here. And so I think we need to be praying and fasting that this all gets sorted out. I do worry, the more I talk to SSPX affiliated people, the more I worry that they are headed down a path that they can't come back from. [00:34:04] Now, some would say they're already down that path. I don't think that's true. [00:34:08] I've always thought that a reconciliation was possible. [00:34:11] Maybe not under Pope Leo, but a reconciliation was possible where they're fully canonically regularized, whatever term you want to use. [00:34:20] But I think that. [00:34:21] I think it's getting more and more unlikely, and I think that's sad because obviously we need them. We need them fully in the church, however you want to define that. Fully canonically regular doing their work, their good work in, you know, within the confines of fold of the wider church. We. We obviously need that. So, okay, I. I'm going to cut it off there. I had some other things I wanted to talk about. Relay this, but I think I'll. I'll just kind of hold off on that. So, again, pray and fast for this whole situation that it might be resolved to the glory of God and for the good of the Church. [00:34:54] Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you and remember the poor.