.jpg)
One would have to be deaf and blind to ignore the existence of an active campaign—composed of widely distributed writings and videos—intended to justify the episcopal consecrations that the Society of Saint Pius X is preparing to perpetrate, or rather, to perpetuate.
The word, which recurs in every sentence or at every phase of the presentation, sounds like a magic word before which all intelligence must bow and cease to function: necessity. As this word is the object of fervent incantations (favored by the blurriness of its outlines), and as the most established divine law must yield in its presence, one can rightfully qualify what the word designates as a divinity, one of those idols to which Solomon himself, despite his profound initial wisdom, ended up paying a deadly cult.
A clever individual wanted to pamper this divinity, qualifying it as an "uncontradicted state of necessity." Perhaps he wanted to give substance to something that cruelly lacked it; perhaps he wants to mislead the bystander to better blind them. Still, in the absence of any mention of a source where a contradiction could come from, this qualifier is nothing but a fig leaf.
Before looking into the nature and consequences of necessity, it is salutary to refer to Holy Scripture, in the only passage (to my knowledge) where it recounts how necessity, serving as a pretext for the usurpation of a divine office, is a calamity. It concerns the sin of Saul and his consequent downfall.
I Reg. xiii, 5-14 The Philistins assembled also to fight against Israel; they had thirty thousand chariots, six thousand horses, and a multitude of foot soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore. And they came up and encamped at Michmash, east of Bethaven. The Israelites, seeing that they were in a strait (for the people were distressed), went to hide in caves, in secret places, in rocks, in tombs, and in cisterns. The other Hebrews crossed the Jordan, and came to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal; but all the people who followed him were in terror. He waited seven days, according to the time set by Samuel. However, Samuel did not come to Gilgal; and little by little, the people were slipping away from the king.
Saul therefore said: "Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings." And he offered the burnt offering. As he was finishing offering the burnt offering, Samuel arrived. And Saul went out to meet him to greet him. Samuel said to him: "What have you done?" Saul replied: "Seeing that the people were leaving me one after another, that you had not come on the day you said, and that the Philistines were assembled at Michmash, I said to myself: The Philistines are going to come down and attack me at Gilgal, and I have not yet appeased the Lord. Being therefore constrained by this necessity, I offered the burnt offering."
Samuel said to Saul: "Stulte egisti," you have acted foolishly, and you have not observed the commandments that the Lord your God had given you. If you had not committed this fault, the Lord would have now established your reign over Israel forever; but your reign shall not continue hereafter. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and he has commanded him to be leader of his people, because you have not observed what he commanded you.
The downfall of Saul was terrifying. He, who had begun as a young man endowed with all qualities and chosen by God to reign with brilliance over Israel, ended his life in a true suicide in the form of a requested and demanded euthanasia.
What is said to be necessary is that which cannot not be. Necessary is therefore opposed to contingent, which designates that which can (or could have) not be.
God alone is absolutely necessary, necessary in Himself: God cannot not exist (which reason can demonstrate); He cannot not be Triune, one single God in three persons (which reason can neither know nor demonstrate, and which is known to us only through divine Revelation and faith). This absolute necessity of God is a necessity in substantia.
Other necessities are relative necessities:
Either to be such a thing: necessity ad substantiam. Thus, to be a triangle, it is necessary for a geometric figure to have three sides and no more.
Or to reach such an end: necessity ad finem. Thus, to go to Heaven, it is necessary to be in a state of grace at the moment of death.
When speaking of human action, a distinction is made in practice between the necessity of constraint—necessitas coactionis—and the necessity of end—necessitas finis (cf. Ia-IIae, q. i, a. 6, ad 3).
Necessity cannot by itself justify the transgression of a divine law: not only that of a law inscribed in the nature of things (natural or supernatural), but also that of a simply positive law, dependent solely on the will of God, and therefore contingent. Witness the astonishing story of Uzzah (II Reg. vi, 5-8):
However, David and all Israel played before the Lord on all kinds of musical instruments: the harp, the lyre, the tambourine, the sistrums, and the cymbals. But when they came to the threshing floor of Nachon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it, because the oxen stumbled and made it tilt. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and He struck him dead there because of his rashness; and Uzzah died there beside the ark of God. David was afflicted because the Lord had struck Uzzah; and that place was called: the Breach of Uzzah, a name it keeps to this day.
An analogy is invoked here or there as an argument, which is, however, unfit to draw a conclusion: When firefighters intervene to put out a fire or save the injured, they can free themselves from priority rules and speed limits: necessity dispenses them from them. "Ipsa necessitas dispensationem habet annexam," it is added to sound learned, quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas (Ia-IIae, q. xcvi, a. 6), while carefully omitting to specify that the cited article deals with human law, and that it cannot therefore be applied to divine law. And even then, not every human law tolerates a dispensation; firefighters cannot drive down the highway in the wrong direction.
But even more than necessity, we are told of a "state of necessity," without it being defined with any precision. This notion is much more malleable than that of necessity plain and simple, and poorly suited to take a place in a rigorous reasoning in its stead.
Certainly, one cannot deny that there is a gaping need among the members of the Holy Church regarding knowledge of holy doctrine and regarding access to the sacraments. One cannot deny that there is an urgency because life is short and souls, while advancing toward eternity, must every day persevere and grow in the grace of God. This state of necessity that is invoked is therefore made of need and urgency.
But as pressing as it may be, it cannot cause one to ignore or despise truer needs and more fundamental urgencies. The most necessary thing for every man living in this world is to belong to the Holy Catholic Church, for there is no salvation outside of her. This belonging, and the fidelity it must inspire, requires that nothing be subtracted from the integrity of the faith and that no attempt be made against the unity of this Church.
The Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, received and receives at every moment from its founder an immutable constitution, placed above laws, some of which (solely among positive laws) are nonetheless influenced in their application by the contingency in which its life moves. Jesus Christ claims this Constitution for Himself: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church"; He claims it as immutable and indefectible: "And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it"; He claims it as being His work at every instant: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age"; He claims it as being founded on Peter, the sole support of the hierarchical order which is the fulfillment of its unity across all times and in the present moment.
The intangibility of the Constitution of the Holy Church is a recurrent teaching—because it is paramount—of the pontifical magisterium. Respecting it is necessary, imperative, and salutary. Everyone must regulate their life according to this Constitution of the Church, which is in the power of no man to change (Leo XIII, Sapientiae christianae, January 10, 1890).
What the encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs expose regarding the character and the Constitution of the Church is, habitually and deliberately, neglected by some with the very precise goal of making a vague notion prevail, which they tell us is drawn from the ancient Fathers and especially from the Greeks.
"To hear them, the Pontiffs, in fact, would never intend to pronounce on questions debated among theologians; thus the duty arises for all to return to the primitive sources and also to explain the more recent constitutions and decrees of the magisterium according to the texts of the ancients" (Pius XII, Humani generis, August 12, 1950).
"They will also dismiss this dangerous manner of expressing themselves which would give rise to erroneous opinions and fallacious hopes that can never be realized, by saying, for example, that the teaching of the Supreme Pontiffs, in the encyclicals on the return of dissidents to the Church, on the Constitution of the Church, on the Mystical Body of Christ, must not be taken so much into consideration since not everything is of faith—or what is even worse—that in dogmatic matters, even the Catholic Church does not possess the fullness of Christ, but that she can be perfected by the other churches.
Catholic doctrine must consequently be proposed and exposed totally and integrally; one must not pass over in silence or veil in ambiguous terms what Catholic truth teaches about the true nature and stages of justification, about the Constitution of the Church, about the primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, about the only true union through the return of Christians to the one true Church of Christ. They can certainly be told that by returning to the Church they will lose nothing of the good which, by the grace of God, is realized in them until now, but that by their return this good will only be completed and brought to its perfection. One will however avoid speaking on this point in such a way that, by returning to the Church, they imagine they are bringing to it an essential element that it would have lacked until now. These things must be told to them clearly and without ambiguity, first because they seek the truth, and secondly because outside of the truth there can never be a true union" (Instruction of the Holy Office [Pius XII], December 20, 1949).
No circumstance, no state of necessity can prevail against this properly divine Constitution. And since, as Pope Leo XIII teaches, "the episcopal order necessarily belongs to the intimate constitution of the Church" (Satis cognitum, June 29, 1896, § 25), any usurpation of an episcopal consecration is "an attack against the unity of the Church" (cf. Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, § 25). In other words, in the very principle and whatever the circumstances, the absence of a mandate produces the same effects in the Church as schism.
Unless one implicitly professes that necessity is a kind of divinity, and that the state of necessity emanating from it supplants the Constitution of the Catholic Church and gags Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God, nothing justifies the usurpation of the episcopate.
And besides, by alleging a state of necessity to resort to bishops whose episcopate is schismatic, what does one ultimately procure?
The perpetuity of the Church? Such a work is totally beyond the reach of men; it is a properly divine work promised by Jesus Christ and divinely guaranteed. In the Christian life, it is the thing about which one should worry the least.
The good of souls? There is a good deal of illusion there. "It is obvious," says Pius XII, "that the spiritual needs of the faithful are not provided for at all by violating the laws of the Church" (Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, § 31).
An illusion whose disastrous effects will end up dominating? It is greatly to be feared, if only because one puts oneself in the necessity of consenting to an occultation or a distortion of a whole section of the doctrine of faith.
June 2026.
Supplement to No. 434 of the bulletin Notre-Dame de la Sainte-Espérance.
3, allée de la Solitude, 33490 Saint-Maixant.
Editorial staff: Abbé Hervé Belmont
(This work has been translated from the original French version and published with permission kindly granted by its author, Fr. Hervé Belmont - Non Excidet's note)
_(page_10_crop).jpg)