The Smoke of Satan
There is a version of the ship/tempest analogy that is true.
If a ship faces a crisis and no one is at the helm, a lower sailor/officer can take over and steer/give commands to save the ship. Amen.
But once they reach port, the lower officer hands the ship back over to the owner. Or once the missing captain re-appears and asks the wheel back, you hand it to him.
A sailor who takes the wheel or keeps the wheel from the captain is a traitor.
SSPX Sherry: “The Pope and the bishops do not teach the Catholic faith” (p. 5)
This is Luther’s argument. Luther believed a Crisis in the Church was causing tens of millions to lose their soul, that the Pope and the bishops were the heretics, and he had to steer the ship himself.
Arian Crisis: “we call it a crisis because the leadership of the Church largely caved to the heresy or actively supported it”.
If by “the leadership of the Church” we mean the majority of eastern bishops, then yes. The Pope remained orthodox (Trinitarian) and was the guide through the crisis.
Lefebvre never refused submission to the Pope in principle, but instead believed he had to act in a way contrary to the will of the Pope in a given circumstance for the good of the Church (p 10)
No superior accepts “I’m submitting to you in principle while I disobey your direct command”.
Legitate justifications to disobey:
- Order lacks the authority
- Command is a sin
“Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated”
This long quote from “Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated” makes the point perfectly that the SSPX is not in communion with the Pope, nor in submission to him.
He has to choose between the ex-cathedra condemnation of Martin Luther and the present ecclesiastical trend which, ‘celebrating’ the 5th centenary of the birth of the German heretic, declared in a letter signed by His Holiness, John Paul II, that today, thanks to the ‘common researches made by Catholic and Protestant scholars …has appeared the deep religiosity of Luther’…
He has to choose between the first Commandment ‘Thou shalt not have strange Gods before Me,’ which corresponds to the duty which, since the Redemption, obliges all men to render to God the worship we owe Him ‘in spirit and truth,’ and the present-day ecclesiastical orientation according to which, at the invitation of the Roman pontiff, were practiced in the Catholic churches of Assisi all the forms, even the worst, of superstition…
He has to choose between the Catholic dogma ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ and the present ecclesiastical orientation which sees in non-Christian religions ‘channels to God’ and declares that even polytheist religions ‘are also venerable’…
He has to choose between the immemorial teaching of the Church according to which heretics and/or schismatics are ‘outside the Catholic Church’ and the present ecclesiastical orientation whereby between the ‘various Christian denominations’ exists only a difference ‘in depth’ and ‘fullness of communion’ and for which consequently the different heretical and/or schismatical sects must be ‘respected as churches and ecclesiastical communities.’” (p. 11)
The SSPX teaches the pre-Conciliar Catholic faith is irreconcilable with modernist Rome. Not my words, but if you believe the quote from “Neither Schismatic nor Excommunicated”, you will not be in communion with the Pope nor those in communion with him. Which is the definition of schism: Schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.