The long-standing and often heated debate surrounding the canonical situation of the Society of St. Pius X (abbreviated SSPX) is not fundamentally about the Society itself, but rather the contradiction between two irreconcilable positions on the very nature and authority of the Church. Due to the rise of naturalism and positivism, many Catholics today, perhaps through no fault of their own, tend to exaggerate the authority of merely human leaders and forget that they, too, are subject to God. While the pope is the supreme legislator for the Church and in a certain sense above the merely ecclesiastical laws he promulgates, he is not above divine law; on the contrary, insofar as the application of canon law is determined by the principles of natural justice, he too is bound to obey it. This is the simple Catholic principle upon which this study, which seeks to explain and defend the Society’s appeal to a “state of necessity” predicated upon the virtue of epikeia, is based.
Very thorough in legal detail, but simultaneously written for the understanding of the lay person. Thank you.