Regarding the state of necessity alleged for the ordination of new bishops, Don Davide Pagliarani, superior general of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, has maintained that in many parishes—not in all, but in a significant proportion—the necessary conditions for the salvation of souls are not present today.
The statement is not an isolated pastoral comment. It has a precise function within the reasoning that the Fraternity has been articulating for decades: it constitutes the premise upon which the invocation of the state of necessity is built, a figure in canonical tradition that allows acting outside ordinary norms when the salvation of souls—the supreme law—is objectively at risk.
And the practical corollary of that invocation is well-known: the consecration of bishops without pontifical mandate, such as those in 1988, as a means considered necessary to ensure the continuity of the Fraternity’s sacramental and pastoral activity. Without that premise—without the assertion that in large parts of the Church the conditions for salvation are lacking—the entire edifice of the state of necessity collapses. That is why Pagliarani’s thesis, far from being an incidental opinion, is the piece that holds everything else together.
The two habitual reactions
Once this is understood, reactions tend to group into two well-differentiated positions.
For one part of Catholics, the assertion is unacceptable. They read it as a rash judgment, unfair to the diocesan clergy and constructed ad hoc to legitimize a canonically irregular action. They maintain that the Church continues to administer the sacraments, preach the Gospel, and form the faithful, and that speaking of a deficit in what is necessary for salvation is a polemical exaggeration intended to justify what otherwise admits no justification.
Others, however, are not scandalized. Not because they despise the work of so many faithful priests, but because they consider the assertion, far from being an outburst, describes a real and verifiable situation. They recognize that there are parishes where Christian life is transmitted with integrity, but they maintain that in many others the preaching has been diluted, the sacraments are administered without corresponding formation, and the faithful live in a religious ignorance previously unthinkable. If that is so, the invocation of the state of necessity would not be a pretext, but the constatation of a fact.
The method: moving away from abstract judgment
Between the indignation of some and the conformity of others, the debate runs the risk of getting trapped in labels: «exaggerated schismatics» versus «accommodating modernists.» That is precisely the dead end to avoid, because the issue is too grave—affects the legitimacy or illegitimacy of episcopal acts performed without pontifical mandate—to be resolved with disqualifications.
The assertion is also not verified in the abstract. It is not enough to discuss whether «the Church» in general is going through a crisis. Pagliarani’s premise is factual: either the conditions for salvation exist in a sufficient proportion of parishes, or they do not. And that can only be checked by descending to each one’s immediate sphere: Are those conditions present in the specific parish I attend? In the parishes I know? In the Catholic schools where my friends’ children study? In the catecheses in my environment? In the universities that present themselves as Catholic?
The answer cannot rely on sympathies, affiliations, or institutional loyalties. Only on verifiable facts.
The questions that must be answered
For the verification to be serious, it is advisable to descend to precise questions, which as a superficial example can be grouped into four blocks.
1. On sin and grace. Is it taught clearly what sin is? Is the distinction between mortal and venial sin made, and are its real consequences for the soul explained? Is the need to live in a state of grace transmitted unequivocally? Or has all this been blurred under generic language about love and mercy that avoids naming things?
2. On the sacraments. Is frequent confession explained and encouraged as an ordinary means of reconciliation, or has the sacrament been relegated to a marginal plane? Is contrition, purpose of amendment, and integral accusation of grave sins still spoken of? Is there real awareness that one should not receive Communion in mortal sin, or has Communion become an automatic gesture, disconnected from examination of conscience and prior confession?
3. On morals. Does the faithful know the Church’s teaching on concrete issues like contraception, or is this matter ignored or presented as a personal option without major relevance? Are the demands of Christian marriage, openness to life, and the gravity of sins against chastity preached clearly? Does the average faithful know that deliberately omitting Sunday Mass constitutes grave matter, or does he perceive it as an optional recommendation?
4. On the Mass and formation. Is the profound meaning of the Mass—sacrifice, real presence, center of Christian life—perceived, or has it been reduced to a community experience without objective demands? Do the young people who pass through parishes, catecheses, and Catholic schools acquire a clear awareness of what it means to live in grace, or do they leave with a vague religious sensitivity that does not guide their conduct?
These questions are not accessory or peculiar to a particular sensitivity. They constitute the very criterion of evaluation, because without knowledge of the commandments, without effective awareness of the gravity of sin, and without ordinary recourse to sacramental grace, Christian life is emptied of real content.
The two possible conclusions, and what is at stake
The result admits no ambiguity, and depends on how each one—with honesty—responds to those questions in his real sphere of observation.
If the answer to most is affirmative—if it is constatated that in the parishes, catecheses, and schools one knows these realities are taught, understood, and lived—then one cannot speak of a state of necessity. The ordinary means are present and operative. And, consequently, the premise that sustains the invocation of the state of necessity by the Fraternity weakens: the episcopal consecrations without pontifical mandate would lack the factual presupposition that justifies them.
If the answer is negative—if those truths are not preached or are diluted, if confession has disappeared from habitual life, if one receives Communion without awareness of the state of grace, if the faithful are unaware of basic moral demands and the profound meaning of the Mass—then the problem ceases to be peripheral. It is no longer a matter of minor deficiencies or debatable pastoral nuances, but of a lack in the elements necessary for salvation. And, in that scenario, the invocation of the state of necessity by the Fraternity—and the canonical consequences that derive from it—ceases to be a mere defensive artifice to become a proportionate response, although it remains debatable in its concrete forms, to an objective situation.
The consequence that cannot be eluded
That is why the debate should not stop at scandal or conformity. The fundamental question is not whether Pagliarani has the right to say what he has said, nor whether his assertion is uncomfortable. The question is whether what he says is true, because the answer to that question determines the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the canonical framework—including the consecration of bishops without pontifical mandate—that the Fraternity has built upon it.
And that truth can only be checked by looking, without excuses and without prior loyalties, at what effectively occurs in the parishes, catecheses, and schools that each one has before him.