According to some sources, the SSPX priests will not adopt Pope Benedict’s change to the Good Friday prayers for the Jews.
The rad-trad Catholic Family News states "that on Sunday February 17, Bishop Fellay stated publicly at Ridgefield that the SSPX will not adopt the new Good Friday Prayer."
This, if true, doesn’t really surprise me.
SSPX priests have been independent agents for quite a while now.
The situation of "less than easily defined union" with Rome (to avoid the "S-word") has continued long enough now that young people who frequent their chapels and enter their seminaries and convents have never known or had much contact with the Catholic Church’s mainstream.
It would require a shift of world view that many of these folks will not be able to make.
I am not saying, thereby, that any of them are "bad". As a matter of fact I admire many of the SPPX followers and priests I have met. I am saying that it simply might require, now, such a radical change of views that many won’t be able to do it. I many of them have generational deeply entrenched attitudes of self-sufficiency. I don’t know if they can do it.
"But Father! But Father!" you might be saying. "Do what?"
Seek true unity with Rome and not just apply lip service.
If SSPX priests won’t use the new Good Friday prayers, I will be sad but not surprised. This would be another sign of the increasing distance between their minds and hearts from the person of the Roman Pontiff.
But this raises another issue, doesn’t it?
The superiors of the SSPX don’t really have any jurisdiction to say what prayers a priest can use and what they can’t use.
Their Society is not a Church. They don’t have any line of proper authority or any jurisdiction.
If an SSPX priests wants to use the new prayers, he could. No one with real ecclesiastical authority can stop them from using the new prayers or impose real censures if they decide not to run with the pack.
I guess that only the threat of displeasure from their congregations or the cutting off of their pay checks can, ultimately, keep priest close to the "party line" in such times.
Frankly, I don’t expect that many SSPX would choose the buck the "party line".
But some might.
Furthermore, who knows what version of the Missale Romanum priests of the SSPX will use for the Triduum? They are individually their own authorities after all. They can do what they want to do according to their own tastes or the pressure of the majority.
Will most of them use an edition prior to the Pius XII reform of Holy Week? I am guessing yes.
Will some of them use an edition after the Pius XII reform, but before John XXIII’s reforms? I am guessing, yes, a few.
Will some use the 1962 edition as printed in 1962 with the Benedictine changes? I am guessing, yes, but very few indeed.
Will some have the guts use the 1962 edition with Pope Benedict’s revision?
In my opinion such a priest would be taking a step closer to acknowledging that Pope Benedict XVI is truly the Vicar of Christ, Successor of Peter, Bishop of Rome, and Supreme Pontiff with full and supreme jurisdiction in the Catholic Church by Christ’s own concession.
In that step, he would seriously challenge the increasingly entrenched view of many followers of the late Archbishop.
My prayers are with them all.
