The SSPX’s February 18 rejection to the Vatican ignites a doctrinal storm over the origins of authority in the Catholic Church.
Newsroom (23/02/2026 Gaudium Press ) When the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) formally rejected the Vatican’s doctrinal proposals on February 18, 2026, few expected the consequence would be to expose profound theological contradictions at the heart of the Roman Curia itself. What might have seemed an echo of the long-standing dissension between the traditionalist fraternity and Rome has, instead, triggered an internal crisis of ecclesiology—how the Church defines authority, sacral power, and the relationship between ordination and governance.
At the center of this heated debate stands Swiss canonist Martin Grichting. Writing for kath.net, he offers a provocative thesis: key figures within the Vatican hierarchy—namely Jesuit Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda and Cardinal Marc Ouellet—are advancing an interpretation of Church governance that fundamentally aligns with the doctrinal logic long defended by the SSPX. The convergence, he argues, is not superficial but structural: both contend, each for their own reasons, that jurisdiction within the Church can exist independently of episcopal ordination.
Grichting’s Thesis: Where the Curia Meets Econe
Grichting, former vicar general of Chur, identifies Cardinal Ghirlanda as the intellectual origin of what he calls a “lay transfer of sacred power.” This controversial administrative shift, visible in the appointment of lay “prefects” to lead certain dicasteries, detaches the exercise of ecclesial governance from the sacrament of Holy Orders. Cardinal Ouellet, once a defender of episcopal centrality, has recently endorsed the model, citing the Holy Spirit’s “charisms” as a legitimate basis for lay governance within the Curia.
To Grichting, this perspective stands in tension with the doctrinal heart of Lumen Gentium 21—the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution—which explicitly roots the potestas regiminis (power of governance) in the sacrament of episcopal ordination. While the Pope possesses universal jurisdiction, that authority presupposes the sacramental foundation of the episcopate. By suggesting otherwise, Grichting warns, the Church edges toward a desacramentalized model of authority.
SSPX’s Defense: Jurisdiction Without Schism
The SSPX’s own February 19 document, released one day after its rejection of the Vatican’s proposal, mirrors Grichting’s diagnosis, though with opposite intent. Seeking to defend its decision to consecrate bishops without papal mandate—currently scheduled for July 1—the SSPX anchors its justification in pre-conciliar papal teaching, especially the encyclicals Mystici Corporis (1943), Ad Sinarum Gentem (1954), and Ad Apostolorum Principis (1958). In these, Pope Pius XII affirmed that bishops receive their jurisdiction “immediately” from the Roman Pontiff, without sacramental mediation.
The Society argues that this tradition proves the independence of jurisdiction from consecration itself. To them, an unordained pope still possesses full governance from the moment of his election; similarly, bishops-elect govern their dioceses before ordination. Hence, SSPX insists, its new auxiliary consecrations will neither create a rival hierarchy nor constitute schism—they merely exercise lawful jurisdiction delegated by the Holy See.
Ouellet’s Response: Charisms and Curial Authority
Cardinal Ouellet, writing earlier in L’Osservatore Romano and later in Word, Sacrament, Charism (Madrid: Claretian Publications, 2024), presents a markedly different theological route to the same administrative result. While acknowledging Lumen Gentium’s teaching on the threefold ministry—teaching, sanctifying, and governing (tria munera)—he posits that the Holy Spirit’s charisms can also ground non-sacramental forms of authority in limited curial contexts.
Under this premise, when Pope Francis appointed lay men and women as prefects of Vatican dicasteries, he was not transferring holy orders but recognizing ecclesial competence expressed through charism. This interpretation seeks to harmonize post-conciliar participation with papal supremacy, but to Grichting’s eyes, it conflates charisma with jurisdiction and erodes the theological boundaries that define sacramental authority.
Leo XIV and the Constitutional Question
The debate now lands squarely on the desk of Pope Leo XIV. Grichting warns that if the new pontiff fails to reaffirm Lumen Gentium 21 as the binding reference for Church governance, the coherence of Vatican II itself will collapse. His critique cuts both ways: if the Curia justifies lay prefects through papal delegation, it mirrors the SSPX’s doctrine that the Pope grants jurisdiction directly, independent of consecration. The result, he notes, is a doctrinal paradox—“grotesque,” in his words—where progressives and traditionalists converge in rejecting the sacramental foundation of authority.
Even more unsettling, Grichting argues, is that this trend reverses Francis’s much-touted synodal vision. The centralization of all jurisdiction in the papacy effectively reinstates a pre-conciliar ecclesiology, one in which the Pope becomes the exclusive source of all power. The irony, he observes, lies in the very logic of hyper-papalism: under the guise of participation, the Church drifts toward total juridical control.
A Church at a Crossroads
The stakes are more than administrative. They are constitutional for Catholic ecclesiology. Can the Church sustain both sacramental governance and lay administrative leadership? Can Lumen Gentium’s vision of collegial episcopacy coexist with the Curia’s bureaucratic reconfiguration? As Pope Leo XIV continues his Wednesday audiences dedicated to Vatican structures, his forthcoming decisions will reveal whether the Church returns to the conciliar balance of sacrament and law—or continues along a path where governance eclipses grace.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Infocatholica
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