"Don't lecture me, Tucho. I see through the lies of the Post-conciliar Church. I do not fear schism as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new non-canonical jurisdiction."
I think Ed’s point about the incongruity between the preamble to Traditiones Custodes and the granting of facilities to SSPX clergy is very interesting.
It reminds me of the “orthodoxy vs praxis” conflicts from my theology classes. I suppose one way of reconciling the two aspects of Pope Francis’s two positions there might be to conceive of orthodoxy (as both teaching and hierarchy) as a self-contained realm, and the granting of mercy (pastoral praxis, sacraments) as wholly disconnected from it. Any attempt to clarify the granting of mercy becomes teaching (or governance) and therefore not-merciful.
Just in case, this isn’t the view I hold. It just seems to me that the example Ed provided illustrates a consequence of a vague conception of mercy, and how that vague conception is not exclusively manipulable by “progressive” (or whatever) positions.
Francis appeared to me to be trying to drive traditional Catholics out of the Church and into the SSPX in order to corral and isolate them from mainstream parishes. He wanted to be inclusive of adulterers, homosexual activists, and the "pro-choice" crowd, while excluding traditional Catholics.
I never listen to him. I do, however, have the ability to read and draw conclusions based on evidence. It's not complicated.
What is your explanation for Francis giving SSPX faculties to hear confessions and marriages Catholics, while simultaneously massively restricting the same things in Catholic churches in union with their local bishop? How else do you contrast his statements about traditional Catholics with his statements about adulterers? Do you have a competing theory, or do you just like to toss around lazy insults?
The real schism is the dissing of the fish sandwich. Are we really judging the substance of the thing by the accidents of the McDonald’s version of the thing? Surely a public recantation is in order.
Sizable segments of the Anglican Communion have orders that do not trace through the Edwardian orders that are declared void. Some certainly received valid orders within the past century and a half. It can actually be quite difficult to determine which Anglicans have invalid orders and for what precise reason those invalid orders are invalid (apart from the obvious case of women).
I learned my Latin in a public high school, so we spoke classical Latin in class and, to this day, I read Latin prayers with a thick Classical accent (almost exclusively hard Gs and Cs, Vs as Ws, etc), I’m sure some of the Latinists would be as upset with me as with y’all ;)
I have the same problem, I started learning classical Latin in a non public school at 10 and continued to getting a college minor in it at a large public school.
I much prefer the ecclesiastical pronunciation. That being said, if S. Augustinus were to time-travel from A.D. 400 to A.D. 2026, he would sound like you, not me.....
Cardinal Sarah's essay on the SSPX decision is quite good, based on the X quotes. I wish I could find it online to read the whole thing. It doesn't appear to be up yet on the Le Journal du Dimanche website.
"We can affirm that the best way to defend the faith, Tradition, and the authentic liturgy will always be to follow the obedient Christ. Never will Christ command us to break the unity of the Church." -Cardinal Robert Sarah
I have a question related to the faculties discussion - is there any data published about attendance rates that helps confirm/deny the idea that people are seeking the sacraments at SSPX chapels that otherwise would have gone to a parish (as opposed to "otherwise would not have sight them at all"). My first thought was that eg. If prior to SSPX priests being able witness marriages, their chapels had disproportionately few weddings compared to their attendance demos, that's a signal that couples were seeking marriage at regular parishes (even if they attend Mass at SSPX chapels); and if it's now shifted to more proportional rates, the faculties are likely to have been the difference. (Obviously confession rates would be fascinating but I'm guessing they don't report those for good reasons!)
I think Pope Francis' intent was more "These current sspx-only attendees aren't getting Sacraments validly, and I can fix that" rather than "I want people currently seeking sacraments at a regular parish to know it's okay to switch to sspx" and I'm just curious if we have any good info on which actually happened
I don't think the proposed statistical analysis would show anything.
It seemed like more of a carrot-stick approach that drove parish switching entirely. Two actions were at play.
1) Vetus Ordo masses were shut down in regular parishes en-masse with 2 hour/each way commutes imposed in some cases.
2) The SSPX was granted faculties to hear confessions and perform marriages. Most Catholics will think it's nuts to grant those without allowing mass to be said, so instead of commuting, people switch parishes.
Long story short, they don't just switch to SSPX for certain sacraments, they switch parishes entirely. IMO, this was Francis' way of driving traditional Catholics out of the Church.
However, it didn't work well because most bishops didn't like Roche acting like the pope and taking away their authority. Tradiciones Custodes was a confusing, inconsistent document that garnered little respect from the bishops and very uneven implementation. In my own diocese, the only approved TLM parish already shared a building with a rock band church in a run-down, ugly building in the ghetto. They were forced to have mass in an unheated outbuilding in January-February, but when attendance actually increased and word of the cruelty started getting out, the bishop decided it wasn't worth the bad PR. When you are in the middle of the most expensive archdiocesan per-capita sex abuse settlement in US Catholic history, you don't need yet another headache. I suspect other dioceses had similar experiences.
The benefit to my diocese's TLM community was that they had been persecuted for so long, there wasn't much else that could be done to them. It was different in North Carolina, where the TLM was allowed to flourish and embed itself in numerous parishes. In my diocese the bishop would cuss at novus ordo priests for just saying the St. Michael prayer after mass. Summorum Pontificum was never implemented in the slightest. Priests were under the bishops thumb, and they knew it.
Perhaps an unpopular take but I’m angry at the SSPX partly because the opportunity to define what elements of Vatican II are binding and in what ways would have been beneficial for so many traditionally leaning Catholics who have questions about various elements of the council. Knowing some Church teaching has more wiggle room wrt assent than others, this is something which, imo, is actually worth a conversation with the DDF. What a lost opportunity.
I was thinking this as well. It could have been really useful to have some clarity from Rome on certain doctrinal questions pertaining to V2. However, we have another type of clarity, which is to say it is now clear that there's nothing clear about the position of SSPX or what exactly their desires are other than to exist in a quasi Catholic state in effective independence from Rome. I agree with the podcast that the granting of faculties really muddied the waters. But I'm glad in a sense that it's now easier to see that this really is not about the old rite of the mass but about authority.
Absolutely agree with you, and with Ed’s analysis. I fear that for unity’s sake, Leo will not take a strong stance of walking back Francis’ “mercies” but he really must, or people will continue to ignore the Holy See as confused and unserious. I won’t presume to tell the Holy Father what to do, but I do think it would also be beneficial to demand a personal meeting with the head of the SSPX to outline consequences, and to offer a last-chance dialogue, perhaps with a tradition-friendly Cardinal with Curial experience, like Muller, Burke, or Sarah. The SSPX really cannot continue acting like the victim here.
Part of the difficulty is that there is already quite a bit of clarity, but Rome doesn't want to call attention to it. Every pope from Paul VI onward has held that Dignitatis humanae does not contain infallible teaching, and therefore if someone holds that it contains some incorrect statements, that could be problematic (depending on a lot of different factors, as described in Donum veritatis), but it's certainly not heresy and it doesn't prevent him/her from being in full communion with the Church. Lefebvre himself saw DH as the biggest break from tradition, and yet it's not a block to them being in the Church.
When they released the Catechism, John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger decided that labeling each paragraph with a theological note ("dogma," "definitive", "not definitive", etc.) might be theologically defensible but in practice it would encourage "cafeteria Catholicism". I think the DDF today would have a similar hesitation to a public statement that traditionalists and Traditionalists can be in full communion with the Church and yet continue believing such things as (1) religious liberty is not a natural human right but a prudential concession for our era, (2) a Catholic head of state has an obligation to proclaim the truth of the Catholic faith to their citizens unless there is a particular situation in which that's imprudent, (3) a simple priest [not a bishop] has the sacramental power to ordain, and this is restricted by church law rather than the nature of the sacrament, and so on. These teachings were taught in many (not all!) schools of theology before 1962, but the Council rejected them, so undergrad theology courses stopped teaching them to students (and quite rightly so). But they are not heresy, so believing them does not separate one from the Church. In some cases, believing these things might even be a serious sin, but serious sin doesn't make you non-Catholic.
And on a human level, I suspect that the SSPX leaders have come to enjoy being the bosses of their group and are in no hurry to submit to someone else's orders.
Would it be a fair comparison to say SSPX’s argument would be like an American saying that they are going to commit murder by a gun because they read the Bill of Rights to say the “right to bear arms” gives them that right, and they will not listen to anybody else because we have misinterpreted the Bill of Rights ever since it was written, and they know there is no way we could agree on things so why even discuss it? Not a great analogy but somewhat? Like “the government isn’t willing to sit down with my small group to debate the merits of the bill of rights anymore. It’s like they’ve move on and they don’t care about us.” (Note this is not a sly rant on any current American group)
I don't think this is a very close analogy, because the SSPX isn't proposing anything intrinsically evil. Whether their actions are judged right or wrong depends entirely on whether a human gives permission or not.
Maybe a better one along similar lines would be groups who assert that the right to bear arms is unlimited - i.e., that anything from a crossbow to a tank to nuclear weapons is protected, and that therefore restrictions on things like fully automatic machine guns (after 1986) are contrary to the constitution and therefore void.
My impression of the SSPX is that they think the leaders of the Church are a shifty ape putting forward a donkey in a lion's skin instead of the real Aslan. I can see why one might think that, but staying in communion and advocating for reform is the better path.
I think they were clear in the podcast though about the difference between the CCP and SSPX wrt bishops? If that's what you meant by "doing the same thing"?
I'm not seeking to defend the SSPX's overall position here, but I thought Pagliarani's argument about "minimum requirements" was somewhat less baffling than it was construed to be in this episode, even if the use of the term "magisterium" presents problems. Think of the statement as saying something like this: "Come on bro are you serious? We all know on a gut level what 'being Catholic' is all about. What, are you going to hold Vatican 3 tomorrow, and declare that we all need to do 15 somersaults per day on pain of mortal sin, and then ask us to come in and discuss the 'minimum requirements' for how the somersaults need to be executed? We all know that would be completely fake and ridiculous, even if you could somehow rubber stamp it as now being 'part of the Magisterium.'" Whether a statement like that is convincing or not will depend on whether the reader considers Vatican 2 to be as ridiculous as my Vatican 3 example (I don't). That said, it relates to serious and not easily soluble issues related to what you could call "magisterial positivism."
I think a problem with Ed's Ash Wednesday idea is that even if non-Mass services are offered, Ash-Wednesday-only Catholics will likely still attend the Masses and receive communion. They will not know that the non-Mass is being given for their benefit.
Ash Wednesday is a busy day and I totally get why this isn't practical/sustainable for some priests, but our pastor gave a brief "Ashes aren't magic and don't forgive your sins; and neither does receiving Communion when you're not otherwise practicing, but y'all, do you know how awesome Confession is??" spiel (more elegantly worded) at our packed Ash Wednesday masses *and* followed it up with "and me and the other priests will stick around after Mass and hear confessions as long as needed" and I wanted to applaud. Pray for him, we got a good one
Ed, there is one thing that I will quibble about regarding your claim that the scope of the present issues with the SSPX have their genesis in Pope Francis; you assume that people were previously avoiding going to confession and getting married in SSPX chapels since they would be invalid. I would say that they were not avoided at all, and that the people going to them for those Sacraments believed them to be valid, that at worst the confessions and marriages would be illicit but valid, like their Masses. I know one such person who expressed great surprise to me that priests needed faculties for confession to valid and basically thought priests in religious Orders had universal faculties. Maybe Pope Francis shouldn't have granted them those faculties since the SSPX took that and flipped it as, "Well, that was sweet of the Holy Father, but here's why we didn't need them anyway, and here's how this proves we're not in schism", but I do believe he was moved to do something for the faithful who, by and large, truly didn't know better and were being invalidly absolved and married.
That's a good point. The SSPX accepted Pope Francis' offer of faculties, but yet continued to assert that their sacraments had been valid all along, due to their extremely flexible definition of "emergency."
Sort of like how Nixon accepted the presidential pardon that Gerald Ford gave him, and yet never admitted any wrongdoing.
it's cuaresma in Spanish. also 40. I've never known where in the world "Lent" comes from
Because we eat so much lentil soup on Fridays 🧐
Gotta go slow
“It’s Schism then”
i literally scrolled down to say this
"Don't lecture me, Tucho. I see through the lies of the Post-conciliar Church. I do not fear schism as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new non-canonical jurisdiction."
"YOUR. NEW. NON-CANONICAL. JURISDICTION?"
It feels like you guys are doing some funny and specific bit, but I don’t get the reference.
It’s a parade of parodies from Revenge of the Sith. And I love every one of them.
It's Lent, the season of self-denial, so I'll refrain from further comment haha
Father, we’re not supposed to make our penances the penance of others 😉😆
"From my perspective, the Bishops are evil!"
Pagliarini: "I AM the Magisterium"
“Did you ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Luther the Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the bishops would tell you…”
I think Ed’s point about the incongruity between the preamble to Traditiones Custodes and the granting of facilities to SSPX clergy is very interesting.
It reminds me of the “orthodoxy vs praxis” conflicts from my theology classes. I suppose one way of reconciling the two aspects of Pope Francis’s two positions there might be to conceive of orthodoxy (as both teaching and hierarchy) as a self-contained realm, and the granting of mercy (pastoral praxis, sacraments) as wholly disconnected from it. Any attempt to clarify the granting of mercy becomes teaching (or governance) and therefore not-merciful.
Just in case, this isn’t the view I hold. It just seems to me that the example Ed provided illustrates a consequence of a vague conception of mercy, and how that vague conception is not exclusively manipulable by “progressive” (or whatever) positions.
Francis appeared to me to be trying to drive traditional Catholics out of the Church and into the SSPX in order to corral and isolate them from mainstream parishes. He wanted to be inclusive of adulterers, homosexual activists, and the "pro-choice" crowd, while excluding traditional Catholics.
Do you take all your opinions from Taylor Marshall?
I never listen to him. I do, however, have the ability to read and draw conclusions based on evidence. It's not complicated.
What is your explanation for Francis giving SSPX faculties to hear confessions and marriages Catholics, while simultaneously massively restricting the same things in Catholic churches in union with their local bishop? How else do you contrast his statements about traditional Catholics with his statements about adulterers? Do you have a competing theory, or do you just like to toss around lazy insults?
Hallow’s Pray40 Challenge has been called that for many years now. “Mark Wahlberg’s Prayer Challenge” was indeed a secular television mistake.
The real schism is the dissing of the fish sandwich. Are we really judging the substance of the thing by the accidents of the McDonald’s version of the thing? Surely a public recantation is in order.
I wish the Protestants would bring back the overpriced on from Chick Fil A. Pope-yes is too far from my house on a moment’s notice.
Sizable segments of the Anglican Communion have orders that do not trace through the Edwardian orders that are declared void. Some certainly received valid orders within the past century and a half. It can actually be quite difficult to determine which Anglicans have invalid orders and for what precise reason those invalid orders are invalid (apart from the obvious case of women).
I learned my Latin in a public high school, so we spoke classical Latin in class and, to this day, I read Latin prayers with a thick Classical accent (almost exclusively hard Gs and Cs, Vs as Ws, etc), I’m sure some of the Latinists would be as upset with me as with y’all ;)
I have the same problem, I started learning classical Latin in a non public school at 10 and continued to getting a college minor in it at a large public school.
I much prefer the ecclesiastical pronunciation. That being said, if S. Augustinus were to time-travel from A.D. 400 to A.D. 2026, he would sound like you, not me.....
Cardinal Sarah's essay on the SSPX decision is quite good, based on the X quotes. I wish I could find it online to read the whole thing. It doesn't appear to be up yet on the Le Journal du Dimanche website.
"We can affirm that the best way to defend the faith, Tradition, and the authentic liturgy will always be to follow the obedient Christ. Never will Christ command us to break the unity of the Church." -Cardinal Robert Sarah
https://x.com/Card_R_Sarah/status/2025474611358384256
Someone just sent it in a group chat I’m in. Here you go: https://dianemontagna.substack.com/p/exclusive-full-english-text-of-cardinal
Thank you, Gavin Gunter. I appreciate you posting the link to Cardinal Sarah's article. He is a living saint, IMO.
I have a question related to the faculties discussion - is there any data published about attendance rates that helps confirm/deny the idea that people are seeking the sacraments at SSPX chapels that otherwise would have gone to a parish (as opposed to "otherwise would not have sight them at all"). My first thought was that eg. If prior to SSPX priests being able witness marriages, their chapels had disproportionately few weddings compared to their attendance demos, that's a signal that couples were seeking marriage at regular parishes (even if they attend Mass at SSPX chapels); and if it's now shifted to more proportional rates, the faculties are likely to have been the difference. (Obviously confession rates would be fascinating but I'm guessing they don't report those for good reasons!)
I think Pope Francis' intent was more "These current sspx-only attendees aren't getting Sacraments validly, and I can fix that" rather than "I want people currently seeking sacraments at a regular parish to know it's okay to switch to sspx" and I'm just curious if we have any good info on which actually happened
I don't think the proposed statistical analysis would show anything.
It seemed like more of a carrot-stick approach that drove parish switching entirely. Two actions were at play.
1) Vetus Ordo masses were shut down in regular parishes en-masse with 2 hour/each way commutes imposed in some cases.
2) The SSPX was granted faculties to hear confessions and perform marriages. Most Catholics will think it's nuts to grant those without allowing mass to be said, so instead of commuting, people switch parishes.
Long story short, they don't just switch to SSPX for certain sacraments, they switch parishes entirely. IMO, this was Francis' way of driving traditional Catholics out of the Church.
However, it didn't work well because most bishops didn't like Roche acting like the pope and taking away their authority. Tradiciones Custodes was a confusing, inconsistent document that garnered little respect from the bishops and very uneven implementation. In my own diocese, the only approved TLM parish already shared a building with a rock band church in a run-down, ugly building in the ghetto. They were forced to have mass in an unheated outbuilding in January-February, but when attendance actually increased and word of the cruelty started getting out, the bishop decided it wasn't worth the bad PR. When you are in the middle of the most expensive archdiocesan per-capita sex abuse settlement in US Catholic history, you don't need yet another headache. I suspect other dioceses had similar experiences.
The benefit to my diocese's TLM community was that they had been persecuted for so long, there wasn't much else that could be done to them. It was different in North Carolina, where the TLM was allowed to flourish and embed itself in numerous parishes. In my diocese the bishop would cuss at novus ordo priests for just saying the St. Michael prayer after mass. Summorum Pontificum was never implemented in the slightest. Priests were under the bishops thumb, and they knew it.
Perhaps an unpopular take but I’m angry at the SSPX partly because the opportunity to define what elements of Vatican II are binding and in what ways would have been beneficial for so many traditionally leaning Catholics who have questions about various elements of the council. Knowing some Church teaching has more wiggle room wrt assent than others, this is something which, imo, is actually worth a conversation with the DDF. What a lost opportunity.
I was thinking this as well. It could have been really useful to have some clarity from Rome on certain doctrinal questions pertaining to V2. However, we have another type of clarity, which is to say it is now clear that there's nothing clear about the position of SSPX or what exactly their desires are other than to exist in a quasi Catholic state in effective independence from Rome. I agree with the podcast that the granting of faculties really muddied the waters. But I'm glad in a sense that it's now easier to see that this really is not about the old rite of the mass but about authority.
Absolutely agree with you, and with Ed’s analysis. I fear that for unity’s sake, Leo will not take a strong stance of walking back Francis’ “mercies” but he really must, or people will continue to ignore the Holy See as confused and unserious. I won’t presume to tell the Holy Father what to do, but I do think it would also be beneficial to demand a personal meeting with the head of the SSPX to outline consequences, and to offer a last-chance dialogue, perhaps with a tradition-friendly Cardinal with Curial experience, like Muller, Burke, or Sarah. The SSPX really cannot continue acting like the victim here.
Part of the difficulty is that there is already quite a bit of clarity, but Rome doesn't want to call attention to it. Every pope from Paul VI onward has held that Dignitatis humanae does not contain infallible teaching, and therefore if someone holds that it contains some incorrect statements, that could be problematic (depending on a lot of different factors, as described in Donum veritatis), but it's certainly not heresy and it doesn't prevent him/her from being in full communion with the Church. Lefebvre himself saw DH as the biggest break from tradition, and yet it's not a block to them being in the Church.
When they released the Catechism, John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger decided that labeling each paragraph with a theological note ("dogma," "definitive", "not definitive", etc.) might be theologically defensible but in practice it would encourage "cafeteria Catholicism". I think the DDF today would have a similar hesitation to a public statement that traditionalists and Traditionalists can be in full communion with the Church and yet continue believing such things as (1) religious liberty is not a natural human right but a prudential concession for our era, (2) a Catholic head of state has an obligation to proclaim the truth of the Catholic faith to their citizens unless there is a particular situation in which that's imprudent, (3) a simple priest [not a bishop] has the sacramental power to ordain, and this is restricted by church law rather than the nature of the sacrament, and so on. These teachings were taught in many (not all!) schools of theology before 1962, but the Council rejected them, so undergrad theology courses stopped teaching them to students (and quite rightly so). But they are not heresy, so believing them does not separate one from the Church. In some cases, believing these things might even be a serious sin, but serious sin doesn't make you non-Catholic.
And on a human level, I suspect that the SSPX leaders have come to enjoy being the bosses of their group and are in no hurry to submit to someone else's orders.
Would it be a fair comparison to say SSPX’s argument would be like an American saying that they are going to commit murder by a gun because they read the Bill of Rights to say the “right to bear arms” gives them that right, and they will not listen to anybody else because we have misinterpreted the Bill of Rights ever since it was written, and they know there is no way we could agree on things so why even discuss it? Not a great analogy but somewhat? Like “the government isn’t willing to sit down with my small group to debate the merits of the bill of rights anymore. It’s like they’ve move on and they don’t care about us.” (Note this is not a sly rant on any current American group)
I don't think this is a very close analogy, because the SSPX isn't proposing anything intrinsically evil. Whether their actions are judged right or wrong depends entirely on whether a human gives permission or not.
Maybe a better one along similar lines would be groups who assert that the right to bear arms is unlimited - i.e., that anything from a crossbow to a tank to nuclear weapons is protected, and that therefore restrictions on things like fully automatic machine guns (after 1986) are contrary to the constitution and therefore void.
My impression of the SSPX is that they think the leaders of the Church are a shifty ape putting forward a donkey in a lion's skin instead of the real Aslan. I can see why one might think that, but staying in communion and advocating for reform is the better path.
I find the Vatican in a situation with difficult optics: Punish the SSPX while turning a blind-eye to the CCP for doing the same thing.
I believe if the Holy Father allows diocesan celebration of the TLM again, it will take a lot of the wind out of the SSPX's sails.
I think they were clear in the podcast though about the difference between the CCP and SSPX wrt bishops? If that's what you meant by "doing the same thing"?
I'm not seeking to defend the SSPX's overall position here, but I thought Pagliarani's argument about "minimum requirements" was somewhat less baffling than it was construed to be in this episode, even if the use of the term "magisterium" presents problems. Think of the statement as saying something like this: "Come on bro are you serious? We all know on a gut level what 'being Catholic' is all about. What, are you going to hold Vatican 3 tomorrow, and declare that we all need to do 15 somersaults per day on pain of mortal sin, and then ask us to come in and discuss the 'minimum requirements' for how the somersaults need to be executed? We all know that would be completely fake and ridiculous, even if you could somehow rubber stamp it as now being 'part of the Magisterium.'" Whether a statement like that is convincing or not will depend on whether the reader considers Vatican 2 to be as ridiculous as my Vatican 3 example (I don't). That said, it relates to serious and not easily soluble issues related to what you could call "magisterial positivism."
I think a problem with Ed's Ash Wednesday idea is that even if non-Mass services are offered, Ash-Wednesday-only Catholics will likely still attend the Masses and receive communion. They will not know that the non-Mass is being given for their benefit.
Ash Wednesday is a busy day and I totally get why this isn't practical/sustainable for some priests, but our pastor gave a brief "Ashes aren't magic and don't forgive your sins; and neither does receiving Communion when you're not otherwise practicing, but y'all, do you know how awesome Confession is??" spiel (more elegantly worded) at our packed Ash Wednesday masses *and* followed it up with "and me and the other priests will stick around after Mass and hear confessions as long as needed" and I wanted to applaud. Pray for him, we got a good one
Ed, there is one thing that I will quibble about regarding your claim that the scope of the present issues with the SSPX have their genesis in Pope Francis; you assume that people were previously avoiding going to confession and getting married in SSPX chapels since they would be invalid. I would say that they were not avoided at all, and that the people going to them for those Sacraments believed them to be valid, that at worst the confessions and marriages would be illicit but valid, like their Masses. I know one such person who expressed great surprise to me that priests needed faculties for confession to valid and basically thought priests in religious Orders had universal faculties. Maybe Pope Francis shouldn't have granted them those faculties since the SSPX took that and flipped it as, "Well, that was sweet of the Holy Father, but here's why we didn't need them anyway, and here's how this proves we're not in schism", but I do believe he was moved to do something for the faithful who, by and large, truly didn't know better and were being invalidly absolved and married.
That's a good point. The SSPX accepted Pope Francis' offer of faculties, but yet continued to assert that their sacraments had been valid all along, due to their extremely flexible definition of "emergency."
Sort of like how Nixon accepted the presidential pardon that Gerald Ford gave him, and yet never admitted any wrongdoing.