Many Are Called

I am not entirely convinced that reconciling the SSPX, or at any rate part of it, is necessarily such a good idea. From the Eastern Catholic Churches to the Ordinariate, there has never before been any question of doctrinal negotiation; it has only ever been a matter of making appropriate pastoral arrangements for communities that had already arrived at full doctrinal assent to the Magisterium. That arrival at that assent was precisely why they were seeking the fullness of Petrine Unity, there being no other possible reason for wanting it, nor, I submit (so to speak), any other possible grounds for extending it. Furthermore, I cannot help suspecting that many, most or even all of the Lefebvrists would regress to schism within 10 years, possibly five, when they did not get their own way over something or other.

All of that said, rather than requiring only as many SSPX bishops as were willing to come back into the One Fold of the One Shepherd to do so, why not take this opportunity to require everyone on earth who holds any teaching responsibility within the Catholic Church to subscribe in a public ceremony to the documents of the Second Vatican Council collectively, to each and every one of those documents in turn, to each and every section of them in turn, to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and to each and every one of its paragraphs in turn? The anniversary of that event would be a Solemnity and a Holy Day of Obligation throughout the world. Propers as for Saint Peter and Saint Paul. But gold vestments, of course. There might even be some annual requirement to repeat and renew the action during the course of the Mass of the Day.

Many, most or all of the Lefebvrists would not do this. But nor would those, admittedly rather elderly these days, who held teaching positions in the Church but who did not believe in, for example, the canonical Biblical text as containing only those things which God wished to be in it, or the Four Canonical Gospels as entirely and uniquely reliable accounts of the actual and historical earthly Life of Jesus both before and after the Resurrection, or the bodily character of that Resurrection as manifested by the Empty Tomb, or a whole host of other doctrinal and moral truths set out with dazzling brilliance, including their utter coherence among themselves, in the Conciliar documents and in the Catechism. (Something like Tradition, Family and Property would also have to go into schism over subscription to the Social Teaching and to the witness for peace of the Council and of the Catechism.)

Where would they go? On the Continent, they would presumably join the Old Catholics, whose every living bishop is now a former Catholic priest of the "Spirit of Vatican II" generation. In the English-speaking world, it would still be tribally impossible for them to join the Church of Ireland, but some sort of link-up with it would hasten the impending split between its mostly Southern liberals and its mostly Northern Conservative Evangelicals. There might also be a tribal problem with the Scottish Episcopal Church, but probably not, and they would fit very easily both into what little remains of that and into what little remains of its American namesake; if anything, the Unitarian Universalism of some of them would make them rather conservative figures in those and in the remnant Anglican Churches of Canada and New Zealand.

But the Church of England, the Church in Wales and the Anglican Church of Australia would admit people on the basis of their refusal to subscribe to theological propositions such as those set out above? The internal ramifications of such admission would be matched or surpassed only by the international ramifications, including from the very Evangelical, and these days largely Charismatic, Anglican missionary presence in South America, where are there no Old Catholics, either. Whatever will become of anyone still alive who continues to adhere to the Liberation Theology of yesteryear? Since they already have laypeople pretending to say Mass in their "base communities", are they just going to give up altogether on any concept of ordination? Since they already have laypeople pretending to say Mass in their "base communities", they have already done so.