Joseph Shaw: Inside the Structures, Outside the Argument
Joseph Shaw has explained why the Latin Mass Society cannot support the Écône consecrations. He has not demonstrated that Father Pagliarani’s diagnosis is false, that regularisation would secure the SSPX’s apostolate, or that sacramental validity alone constitutes the complete availability of the Church’s means of salvation.
Dr Joseph Shaw’s explanation of why the Latin Mass Society does not support the episcopal consecrations planned by the Society of Saint Pius X is unusually measured. He does not indulge in accusations of sedevacantism, Protestantism or incipient schism. He acknowledges the damage inflicted by the post-conciliar establishment, honours the work of Michael Davies and concedes that the treatment of Catholics attached to the traditional liturgy has given SSPX supporters substantial grounds for mistrust.
These are considerable merits. They also make the weakness of his central argument more conspicuous.
Shaw succeeds in explaining the institutional position of the Latin Mass Society. He does not succeed in refuting the SSPX’s case. The two questions are related, but they are not identical.
The LMS exists to promote the traditional Roman liturgy within the canonical structures of the Church in England and Wales. Its work depends upon access to diocesan churches, shrines, parishes, bishops and clergy. It is therefore entirely understandable that the Society should decline to endorse episcopal consecrations expressly forbidden by Rome and prohibited by canon law. Public support for such an act could damage its relations with the hierarchy and impede the apostolate for which it was established.
That is a legitimate prudential judgement. It is not a theological demonstration.
“This would compromise our work” does not mean “the SSPX’s diagnosis is false”. Nor does “we have chosen to remain within the ordinary canonical structures” prove that every Catholic body outside those structures has thereby placed itself outside the Church.
Indeed, Shaw’s contrast between remaining “inside the structures” and being “outside the Church” is too blunt to describe the SSPX’s actual condition. The Holy See continues to regard the Society as canonically irregular, but it has also granted its priests faculties to hear confessions validly and licitly and has authorised arrangements under which they may assist validly at marriages. Rome itself therefore treats the SSPX neither as an ordinary canonical institute nor as a body wholly external to Catholic ecclesial life. Its position is anomalous, defective and dangerous, but not adequately described by Shaw’s binary formula.²
The decisive weakness appears when Shaw examines Father Davide Pagliarani’s assertion that Catholics in ordinary parishes are frequently deprived of the means necessary for their eternal salvation.
Shaw observes that Baptism and Confession remain available in the average Catholic parish. The SSPX does not deny the validity of the reformed rites of Baptism or Penance. It follows, he suggests, that the sacramental means by which original and mortal sin are remitted have not disappeared. What Pagliarani really means by a “state of necessity” must therefore be the absence of the traditional liturgical books, together with a shortage of good preaching and worthy ceremonial.
This is the fulcrum of Shaw’s argument. It is also where it fails.
He has reduced the Church’s means of salvation to the bare availability of valid sacramental matter, form, intention and minister. If a valid Baptism can be found and a valid absolution obtained, the essential means of salvation are deemed present. Integral doctrine, moral formation, sound catechesis, reverent worship and the reliable guidance of souls are then treated as highly desirable advantages, but not as elements whose widespread absence could contribute to a genuine spiritual emergency.
That is not the Church’s understanding of her saving mission.
Canon law itself declares that the Christian faithful have the right to receive from their pastors the spiritual goods of the Church, “especially the word of God and the sacraments”. It does not say the sacraments alone. The same Code obliges a parish priest to ensure that the word of God is proclaimed “in its entirety” and that the faithful are instructed in the truths of the faith. The Catechism, while affirming the objective efficacy of the sacraments, also teaches that their fruits depend upon the disposition of those who receive them.³
The Church therefore saves souls not by the mechanical distribution of valid rites, but through the integrated exercise of her teaching, sanctifying and governing offices. She preaches the faith by which men are brought to Baptism. She teaches the moral law by which penitents recognise sin and approach Confession with contrition. She forms consciences so that Holy Communion is received worthily. She instructs the young, prepares couples for marriage, warns sinners of judgement, consoles the dying and directs all her children towards their supernatural end.
Our Lord commanded the Apostles not only to baptise the nations, but to teach them “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). Saint Paul teaches that “faith then cometh by hearing” (Romans 10:17). The word and the sacrament are not rival means of salvation. They belong to one divine economy.
A valid font does not compensate for the disappearance of belief in original sin. A valid absolution does not adequately serve souls when mortal sin is seldom named, contrition is neglected and amendment of life is replaced by therapeutic reassurance. A valid Eucharist does not exhaust the Church’s pastoral duty when belief in the Real Presence collapses, sacrilegious Communion becomes routine and the sacrificial nature of the Mass is obscured. A valid marriage ceremony does not by itself preserve Christian matrimony where contraception, divorce, cohabitation and sexual immorality are met with habitual silence.
None of these disorders makes the sacraments invalid. That is precisely the point Shaw misses. A crisis in the transmission and fruitful reception of the means of salvation need not amount to the universal invalidity of sacramental rites.
The SSPX must still prove that the crisis is sufficiently grave, extensive and enduring to justify the remedy it proposes. It must demonstrate that the necessity is objective rather than merely asserted, that lesser remedies are inadequate and that its intended action is proportionate to the evil feared. Those are serious burdens. Shaw, however, does not impose them. He instead defines the alleged necessity so narrowly that it could exist only if valid Baptism and absolution had almost vanished from the Church.
That is not an examination of Pagliarani’s argument. It is its premature dismissal.
Shaw further weakens his case by paraphrasing Pagliarani’s concern for the “worthy administration of the sacraments as the Church has always done” as little more than a preference for good priests, ceremonies without abuses and the pre-conciliar books. Thus translated, the SSPX’s position begins to resemble an aesthetic objection to modern parish life.
Yet the controversy is not fundamentally about lace, Latin or ceremonial refinement. The traditional rites embody and transmit a particular doctrinal, ascetical and sacerdotal formation. Their prayers teach what the Church believes concerning sin, sacrifice, grace, priesthood, propitiation, judgement and the supernatural end of man. One may reject the SSPX’s conclusion without pretending that the difference between the older and newer forms is merely the difference between a well-conducted ceremony and an untidy one.
Shaw himself has spent years arguing that liturgical forms shape belief, nourish devotion and affect souls. His defence of the ancient Mass depends upon precisely that truth. It is therefore inconsistent to celebrate Michael Davies for recognising that the received liturgy is a “construction of symbolic action and sacramental forms” essential to the good of souls, and then to treat Pagliarani’s concern for the traditional administration of the sacraments as though it concerned little more than liturgical dignity.
The next weakness concerns regularisation.
Shaw asks whether a reconciled SSPX would have been prevented from continuing its existing apostolate and answers: “obviously no”. He adds that other traditional institutes have repeatedly obtained bishops to confer ordinations and Confirmations according to the older books.
There is nothing obvious about his answer.
It is true that canonically regular traditional institutes have exercised fruitful apostolates and have obtained episcopal assistance. It is also true that their canonical standing has spared them many of the evils inherent in prolonged irregularity. None of this establishes that the SSPX could safely entrust its worldwide apostolate, seminaries and priestly formation to unspecified future assurances.
The treatment of the traditional liturgy since 1988 has not followed a single stable trajectory. It has passed through limited indults, broader toleration, juridical liberation and renewed restriction. In 2007, Summorum Pontificum declared that the older Missal had never been abrogated and gave priests broad liberty to celebrate it. In 2021, Traditionis custodes displaced that settlement, forbade the creation of new groups, placed celebrations under restrictive episcopal regulation and declared the reformed books the unique expression of the Roman Rite’s lex orandi.
The subsequent Responsa ad dubia described celebrations according to the older Missal as concessions rather than opportunities to promote the former rite. It recommended time-limited permissions and expressly denied diocesan bishops permission to authorise use of the pre-conciliar Pontificale Romanum. It directed that those attached to the former liturgy should be accompanied towards the reformed books.⁴
These measures do not prove that a regularised SSPX would inevitably be suppressed. They do prove that its concerns about permanence cannot be dismissed as fantasy. Shaw objects that SSPX supporters rely upon hypothetical predictions about what Rome might do after regularisation. Yet his own assertion that the Society’s apostolate would “obviously” remain untouched is itself hypothetical.
The question is not whether a friendly bishop can occasionally be found to ordain seminarians or confirm children. The question is whether an international priestly society with seminaries, schools, priories and missions may prudently depend indefinitely upon borrowed episcopal services, changing curial policies and personal exemptions vulnerable to reversal.
An internal bishop would not give the SSPX independence from the Pope. Every Catholic bishop remains subject to the Roman Pontiff. It would, however, provide continuity of formation, ordination and government within the Society’s own apostolate. The pastoral desire is neither mysterious nor unreasonable. The canonical question is whether the SSPX may attempt to satisfy it without a pontifical mandate.
On that point, the law is plain.
Canon 1013 provides that no bishop may consecrate another bishop unless a pontifical mandate is first established. Canon 1387 states that both the consecrating bishop and the man who receives episcopal consecration without such a mandate incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See. The Pope’s authority over episcopal appointments and consecrations cannot be reduced to an administrative convention. It protects the visibility and unity of the Catholic episcopate.⁵
The canonical defence of necessity must therefore be expressed with exactness.
Canons 1323 and 1324 concern penal imputability. They provide that necessity, grave fear or a non-culpable belief in such circumstances may exclude or diminish liability to a canonical penalty. Where the mitigating circumstances of canon 1324 are present, the offender is not bound by a latae sententiae penalty, although lesser penalties or penances may still be imposed.
These provisions do not create a pontifical mandate. They do not supply canonical mission, erect a jurisdiction or transform a prohibited consecration into an ordinarily lawful act. Even if the automatic penalty were not incurred, the consecration would remain objectively contrary to the explicit command of ecclesiastical law.
Conversely, the existence of canon 1387 does not permit commentators simply to presume that every relevant person certainly incurs the automatic penalty regardless of intention, necessity, imputability or the other provisions of penal law. The canonical questions of objective illegality, subjective culpability and incurred penalty are related but distinct.⁶
The SSPX cannot canonise its own judgement merely by pronouncing the word “necessity”. Shaw cannot refute that judgement merely by observing that valid Baptism remains available in the next parish.
A serious critique would examine the alleged necessity according to its object, gravity, extent, duration and proportionality. It would ask what remedies Rome has offered, what guarantees were proposed, why they were rejected, whether alternative bishops are realistically available and whether the Society’s continued existence is actually endangered. It would distinguish the unlawfulness of the act from the imputability of those performing it.
Shaw undertakes none of this. His argument moves from the availability of valid sacraments to the non-existence of necessity, and from the survival of regular traditional institutes to the supposed security of a hypothetical regularised SSPX. Neither inference is sufficient.
His concluding appeal to mutual trust is more persuasive, but it also concedes much of what his earlier argument attempts to deny. He admits that supporters of the SSPX inevitably observe how canonically regular traditionalists are treated and draw conclusions from it. He acknowledges that the record has been “pretty mixed”. He hopes that Pope Leo XIV will reassure Catholics attached to tradition of his pastoral concern.
But trust cannot be built from one side alone.
Écône cannot demand that Rome trust its intentions while it prepares to act against an express papal prohibition. Rome cannot demand that Écône trust unspecified future protection while withholding durable episcopal provision and maintaining a legal regime under which the ancient liturgical books may be restricted as temporary concessions.
Pope Leo XIV’s direct appeal to Father Pagliarani must be received with the utmost seriousness. The Pope has invoked the authority entrusted to him by Christ and asked the SSPX to desist. No Catholic can regard such an intervention as an irrelevant bureaucratic formality. The visible unity of the Church and the authority of Peter are divine goods, not negotiable inconveniences.⁷
Yet papal authority exists to govern as well as to prohibit. Rome possesses the power to nominate acceptable candidates, grant a pontifical mandate, erect a suitable canonical structure, appoint a pontifical delegate and provide binding guarantees for the Society’s liturgy, seminaries and apostolate. The absence of such a solution cannot be attributed to any deficiency in papal jurisdiction.
The lesson of 1988 is not that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre possessed the right to do whatever he judged necessary. Nor is it that Rome offered nothing. The lesson is that unresolved episcopal provision, uncertain assurances and last-minute appeals are a disastrous method of governing a crisis whose consequences may endure for generations.
The Latin Mass Society is therefore justified in withholding its support from the intended consecrations. Its own vocation is to preserve and extend the traditional liturgy within the canonical structures available to it. That work has borne fruit and deserves gratitude.
But institutional prudence should not be mistaken for theological proof.
Joseph Shaw has explained why the LMS cannot accompany the SSPX across the canonical boundary. He has not demonstrated that the crisis invoked by Father Pagliarani is imaginary. He has not shown that sacramental validity by itself constitutes the integral availability of the means of salvation. He has not proved that regularisation would leave the Society’s apostolate secure. He has not established that occasional access to external bishops provides adequate long-term episcopal provision. And he has not seriously addressed the distinction between objective illegality and penal imputability.
Écône should not proceed as though communion with Peter were expendable. Peter should not respond as though an appeal to obedience exhausted the duties of his office.
The SSPX must not make itself the final judge of necessity. Rome must not make itself the author of an avoidable catastrophe.
Shaw has successfully described the position of those who remain inside the structures. On the central question, however, he remains outside the argument.
¹ Joseph Shaw, “Why the Latin Mass Society Does Not Support the SSPX Consecrations,” Catholic Herald, 29 June 2026.
² Francis, Misericordia et misera, 20 November 2016, no. 12; Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, “Letter to the Ordinaries of the Episcopal Conferences Concerned regarding Faculties for the Celebration of Marriages of Faithful of the Society of Saint Pius X,” 27 March 2017. The latter expressly describes the Society’s condition as one of continuing “canonical irregularity” while authorising faculties intended to ensure sacramental validity and liceity.
³ Code of Canon Law, cann. 213 and 528 §1; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1128.
⁴ Francis, Apostolic Letter Traditionis custodes, 16 July 2021, arts. 1–5; Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Responsa ad dubia concerning Traditionis custodes, 4 December 2021.
⁵ Code of Canon Law, cann. 1013 and 1387.
⁶ Code of Canon Law, cann. 1323–1324. Canon 1324 §3 states that, where the mitigating circumstances enumerated in §1 apply, the offender is not bound by a latae sententiae penalty, although lesser penalties or penances may be imposed.
⁷ Leo XIV, “Letter to the Reverend Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X,” 29 June 2026.
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