Response to John Salza's claim about the SSPX

[Mr. Mysterious]

Recently John Salza wrote a piece entitled "The Failed claim of the SSPX." Rather than pick it apart I'll let others read it here:
https://onepeterfive.com/the-failed-defense-of-the-sspx-reply-to-bocca/

A thoughtful response by Dr. Brian McCall was not long in coming:
https://onepeterfive.com/the-ordinary-mission-of-the-sspx-reply-to-salza/

This line by Salza jumped out at me: "Neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor any of his bishops and priests have produced a single miracle to justify their ministry without a canonical mission, even though they claim we are suffering perhaps the greatest crisis in Church history."

Do we have miracle producing bishops today in the Novus Ordo world? If so, where are they? The only time you've heard the words "bishop" and "miracle" used in the same sentence is when someone says something along the lines of "It's a miracle Bishop X hasn't closed down more churches in his diocese."

I'll also point out that the late, almost universally respected Canon Lawyer Count Neri Capponi mentioned that the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre violated Canon Law.

[Prayerful]

The devil and his minions can perform apparent miracles. The greatest miracle is getting many into Heaven and I think Archbishop Lefebvre surely performance that miracle. Salza 'mission' thing seems a red herring. Anyhow, we won't be seeing a new edition of TOFP, which was more an apologia for the errors of V2.

[Ragnarok]

This line by Salza jumped out at me: "Neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor any of his bishops and priests have produced a single miracle to justify their ministry without a canonical mission, even though they claim we are suffering perhaps the greatest crisis in Church history."

Even though I disagree with Mr. Salza - this is completely taken out of context. Mr. Salza states that, traditionally, the Church only allowed supersession of Canon Law via a person having an "Extraordinary Mission", or if God directly granted it and demonstrated it via miracle - of course, if it conformed to moral and doctrinal teaching.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, ordered a Bishop (through St. Juan Diego) to build a Church. Apparitions don't have canonical authority to manage dioceses; so the Bishop demanded Our Lady a miracle to prove this command came from God, to which she obliged.


Mr. Salza's claim here is that for the SSPX to supersede licit canonical authority, they would need to prove that God directly granted it via miracle.

[Elizabeth.2]

Food for thought.  Interesting that this is just recent, too.  I'm biased toward Mr. McCall and Catholic Family News in general.

[tradical]

Salsa appears to have fallen into a form of extreme or literal thinking.

For him there appears to be only two in option: either God works miracles to give his seal of approval, or the pope does.

He doesn't seem to hold with any disobedience and so he now seems to share a philosophy with the sedevacantist that he opposes.  Either Francis is the pope and he must be obeyed in all things, or he is not the pope and is to be disregarded in all things.

I am looking for time to write about this on my blog, should be fun to dig into his arguments.

[Bubba]

1. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, SSPX performed a successful exorcism without normal canonical status.

2. The Society has a list of miracles presented to the Vatican attributed to ABL's intercession, in the cause for his future canonization.

3. The greatest miracle attributed to ABL/SSPX is the preservation of Catholic Tradition largely because of them, including the existence of the ED groups and TLM indults. 

[Xavier]

I, Nishant Xavier, also responded to John Salza here: https://onepeterfive.com/in-praise-of-archbishop-lefebvre-and-defense-of-the-sspx/