In the Church, tradition does not mean fossilization, but vitality. In fact, the Church is accompanied on its path through time by the Holy Spirit, who introduces it ever more deeply into the truth (Jn 16,13). Already in the 5th century, St. Vincent of Lérins had compared the doctrine of the Church to the human body. This develops throughout life. It differentiates, but preserves its identity. And Vincent specifies: «Children have as many parts as men do. And if there are some that only form in maturity, they are already present in germ previously, so that later, in the old man, nothing new comes to light that was not already hidden beforehand in the child» (Commonitorium, 23,4).
Traditionalism, on the contrary, is the attempt to declare growth concluded from a certain point in this development. That is why traditionalism is fossilization.
This is demonstrated by the evolution of ecclesiastical doctrine regarding the episcopal ministry. Throughout the first millennium, the Church was structured in practice in an episcopal manner as something obvious, without yet having an articulated theology of the episcopal ministry. This self-conception entered into crisis in the second millennium. The main responsibility for this must be attributed to conciliarism: the thesis according to which the college of bishops or the council would be above the Pope. This erroneous conception made it impossible, during the Council of Trent (1545-1563), to deepen and formulate the doctrine of the first millennium on the episcopal ministry. There was agreement that the sacrament of orders conferred the ministry of sanctifying, that is, the faculty to administer the sacraments (Eucharist, Confirmation, Ordination). But at that delicate moment in the history of the Church, it was politically difficult to explain explicitly that the sacrament of orders also transmitted the offices of teaching and governing. The risk would have been run that the papacy, once again subjected to the pressure of the Reformation, would be relativized. In fact, if it had been true that bishops received their jurisdictional powers directly from Jesus Christ through the sacrament, it would no longer have been possible to explain what the primacy of the Pope still consisted of. He would have run the risk of once again being subordinated to the college of bishops, in the sense of conciliarism.
The First Vatican Council (1870) clarified the question of the Pope’s jurisdictional primacy. Conciliarism was thus definitively overcome. This allowed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) to clarify, through the dogmatic constitution «Lumen Gentium» (LG), the doctrine on the episcopal ministry, still incompletely developed: episcopal consecration confers the fullness of the sacrament of orders and, therefore, also the offices of teaching and governing. But the latter, with regard to their exercise, always need determination by the Pope (LG 21). As for the statements made before the Council—for example, by Pius XII—the Pope Paul VI, through the «Nota explicativa praevia» (NEP), which declared it an integral part of LG, determined interpretively: «The documents of the Supreme Pontiffs of our time on the jurisdiction of Bishops must be interpreted in light of this necessary determination of powers» (n. 2). What was therefore present in germ has now come to light.
However, recently, traditionalism has opposed the living tradition. The Society of St. Pius X declared, in a statement of February 19, 2026 (Annex II), its intention to maintain the pre-conciliar stance, as it had been expressed by Pius XII. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has also positioned itself in a traditionalist manner against the living tradition. In fact, it defines the still incomplete, simplistic, and already outdated doctrine of medieval theology, as it had been expressed by Pius XII, as the «traditional» doctrine («Synod» of Bishops 2021–2024, Report of Commission No. 5: On the Participation of Women in the Life and Governance of the Church, Appendix V, no. 17). The doctrine of the Second Vatican Council thus appears as a novelty. This is manipulative in itself. However, the way in which the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has published its document must also arouse special suspicion. This includes its report on its homepage among its own documents. Moreover, it appears as the author of the document. At the same time, the Dicastery maintains that it is not an «official» document. The lack of transparency in this way of proceeding—do non-official documents of the Magisterium even exist?—makes one think that something is not right.
Be that as it may: we are faced with a strange alliance, in which the Society of St. Pius X, together with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, contradicts the living tradition of the Church in a traditionalist manner. Both want to return to a stance already overcome, since it has been further developed subsequently by the Magisterium. What is particularly grave is that, with the appointment of laypeople to positions that involve the exercise of the power of governance, Pope Francis has also joined the side of traditionalism. Pope Leo XIV has followed him in this up to now, in fact maintaining the appointments that contradict the Second Vatican Council.
The classic argument of traditionalists is always that the Church has introduced something new that is not contained in the «depositum fidei» transmitted and traditional. For this reason, they refuse to follow it and remain faithful to what they consider the «tradition».
It is worth delving deeper, in the concrete case, into the question of whether the Second Vatican Council invented something or whether, in the sense of the living tradition according to St. Vincent of Lérins, it simply developed something that had always existed implicitly.
If the first millennium is analyzed, there is consensus that the Church had an episcopal structure. Episcopal ordination was considered, in fact, the fullness of the sacrament of orders. Moreover, in councils and synods, bishops assumed responsibilities of ecclesiastical governance beyond their own diocese, over which they exercised jurisdiction. Thus, due to episcopal consecration, there has always existed a co-responsibility of each bishop for the Church as a whole, just as the apostolic college, together with Peter and under his authority, had a co-responsibility for the entire Church. Thus, a bishop was conferred, by legal means—for example, by the Pope—the responsibility for a specific diocese. However, in addition to this, the bishop also possessed a competence of pastoral direction that extended beyond his own particular Church and that he exercised in synods and councils. And this competence was not conferred on him by legal means, but was already of a sacramental nature: the office of governing in its fundamental form. Because the legal mandate, for example by the Pope, had always been applied only to a specific diocese.
If the acts of the Council of Trent are now studied, an interesting conclusion is reached. It was above all Spanish, French, and Italian bishops and prelates who, in numerous votes, expressed the implicit belief that, with episcopal consecration, the ministries of teaching and direction were fundamentally also transmitted. Their groping search was manifested, for example, in the emphasis that the potestas iurisdictionis was also «spiritual». Bishops did not receive jurisdiction from the Pope, but only its use («Habent igitur episcopi a pontefice non iurisdictionem, sed usum»). The jurisdictional power came from God, because Jesus Christ had instituted the episcopal ministry in the Church. From the Pope came, moreover, the disposition that this or that bishop act here or there. Other prelates have spoken of an «internal jurisdiction» of bishops, which would derive from Jesus Christ. However, an «external call» by the Pope would also be necessary. These observations cannot surprise. In fact, already in the Middle Ages it was known that Jesus Christ had called the college of the apostles. It was not Peter who appointed the apostles and granted them authority. According to the testimony of Sacred Scripture, the apostles were not even simple collaborators of Peter. Together with him they formed a college. And for this reason, in the time of the Church, bishops could not be only vicars of the Pope, whose powers depended exclusively on him. By their own nature as successors of the apostles (through episcopal consecration), they already had a co-responsibility in the direction of the universal Church, whose hierarchical moderator was, of course, the Pope.
Opposed to the statements of the conciliar fathers of Trent, which approach what the Second Vatican Council teaches, was the opinion of those who saw the danger above all in conciliarism. The one who expressed the conviction of these bishops most forcefully was Diego Laínez (1512–1565), second general of the Jesuit order. He held the binary thesis of the division between the unlimited «potestas iurisdictionis» of the Pope, which he then conferred on the bishops, and the «potestas ordinis», conferred by Jesus Christ through the sacrament of orders.
With this view, Laínez exalted the papal omnipotence excessively. In this way, he was one of the first representatives of his order who repeatedly sought proximity to both ecclesiastical and political central powers and tried to strengthen them, in order then, through influence on these powers, to strengthen the power of the Church (or of the order?). As is well known, this unhealthy spirituality contributed to the fact that Pope Clement XIV had to suppress the Jesuit order in 1773. In fact, the Jesuits had exaggerated in their thirst for power, governing the secular affairs of royal courts from the second row. The political reaction this provoked cost their order its existence temporarily. A similar approach by the Jesuits toward the papacy is responsible for the fact that, even today, in the Church they are more feared than loved and are regarded with suspicion.
In this context, it is no surprise that behind the latest exaltation of papal supremacy—which obscures the sacramental nature of the Church and, in the name of traditionalism, rejects the Second Vatican Council—there hides once again a Jesuit: the canonist Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda. His essay «L’origine e l’esercizio della potestà dei Vescovi. Una questione di 2000 anni» (Periodica de re canonica 106 [2017], pp. 537–631) serves the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith as a basis for granting laypeople jurisdictional power in the Church. And this is only possible if the sacrament of orders no longer confers the office of governing by itself. Likewise, what Pope Paul VI emphasized explanatorily in NEP, no. 2 must be rejected: that the sacrament of orders creates the «ontological» foundation for the exercise of the office of governing. Rather, the origin of all jurisdictional power must be transferred to the papacy, as the sole source of law. Only through this superpapalism, which contradicts the doctrine of the Church, can jurisdictional power be attributed to laypeople, bypassing the sacrament of orders, as already happened in the Middle Ages.
In defense of Diego Laínez, however, it must be noted that, when he presented his theses, the Magisterium had not yet deepened the ecclesiastical doctrine. The same applies to the much-cited abbess of Las Huelgas, who in fact exercised an episcopal jurisdictional power, and to the prince-bishops of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, who had not been consecrated bishops. Admittedly, it was inadmissible that the latter were often not even ordained priests. They contented themselves with enjoying the office conferred by the Pope and the income derived from it, leaving, however, the pastoral and sacramental work to ordained priests and auxiliary bishops. But they could do so with a clear conscience, since they based themselves on the then-widespread medieval theological view of the episcopal ministry, as Laínez had also upheld it: the papal appointment alone confers the authority of governance.
At that time, the Second Vatican Council was not yet spoken of. But today, after the clarification provided by an ecumenical council, continuing to propagate Laínez’s thesis and attempting to put it into practice is something else: it is traditionalism, the refusal to recognize the living tradition of the Church.
In this context, it is equally an inadmissible abstraction that the Society of St. Pius X claims that it only consecrates auxiliary bishops, who would lack governing power and therefore could not be considered schismatic. Because every episcopal consecration always also implies sacramental integration into the episcopal college. It entails the fundamental transfer of the office of governing vis-à-vis the universal Church and therefore cannot take place without the consent of the one who is the head of that college.
One point remains to be added: the source regarding the interventions of the bishops cited at the Council of Trent. Everything necessary on this is found in Joseph Ratzinger, Gesammelte Schriften, Freiburg-Basel-Vienna 2012, vol. 7/2, p. 685 ff. But since the aversion of traditionalists toward him on both sides—in the Society of St. Pius X and in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith—is probably insurmountable, the following should be noted: with regard to the votes of the Fathers of Trent, Ratzinger is not original at all. In fact, he quotes from another work. It was published in Rome in 1964 with the title: «Lo sviluppo della dottrina sui poteri nella Chiesa universale. Momenti essenziali tra il XVI e il XIX secolo». The work was written by who was later defined as the progressive father of the «Bologna School»: Giuseppe Alberigo (1926–2007). Alberigo concludes his research on the Council of Trent (pp. 11–95) with the observation: «It must likewise be considered as the common judgment of the Tridentine fathers—though more in the realm of conviction than of a perfectly formulated thesis—that to each bishop is conferred with consecration, and only by the effect of consecration, a certain extrasacramental supernatural pastoral power with respect to the universal Church»—in other words: the office of governing in its fundamental form.
The reference to Alberigo runs the risk of making the Society of St. Pius X even more suspicious. But the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with its current theological orientation, if it already disregards Pope Paul VI and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, at least should trust Alberigo. It is true that he later gained fame as, with regard to the last Council, the father of a hermeneutic of rupture. But in the question at hand, he defended a hermeneutic of continuity of the Church’s doctrine, as St. Vincent of Lérins already taught.
And the Pope must be clear that he can—and in fact must—excommunicate those who ordain a bishop without his mandate, as well as those ordained themselves. Because they not only violate the current canon law, but above all the doctrine of the Church on the sacrament of Orders, as it was more precisely expounded by the Second Vatican Council. But if, at the same time, the Pope disobeys the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council in the grave matter of the sacrament of Orders, by granting jurisdiction without consecration, he undermines his own credibility. Then we can only quote our Lord Jesus Christ to him: «The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice» (Matthew 23:2-3).