Much ink has been spilled since July 1 variously castigating or rallying one’s opponents or compatriots, respectively, in the great and never-ceasing debate over the SSPX. Comparatively little space, it seems to me, has been done to reach out to the fence-sitters: those who, for want of research, prayer, or decisiveness, have yet to come down one way or the other on the issue.
From my own experience speaking with these poor souls stranded in ecclesiastical no-man’s land, many of them simply cannot or will not resolve their scruples. They see compelling arguments on both sides, or are mired in half-understood conceptions of canon law, papal infallibility, or states of necessity. The seeming lack of obvious proofs or absolute certainties makes of them ostriches, burying their heads in the sand in the pious hope that perhaps the matter will simply go away before they are forced to make up their minds. Such a position is ultimately not tenable, both for practical reasons (what happens when their diocesan TLMs – virtually all of the fence-sitters attend an indult Mass – are suppressed and the Society is their only option?) and for reasons of intellectual honesty (sitting on the sidelines of one of the most important theological and ecclesiastical questions of the age is hardly valorous and risks incurring our Lord’s strikingly severe condemnation of the lukewarm, whom He will vomit from his mouth [Apocalypse 3:16]).
Because it is the question of certainty (how can I know what to do?) that paralyzes so many of these people, virtually all of whom act (or rather, fail to act) in good faith, a Catholic examination of the degrees of certainty and the problem of doubt is in order. Fortunately, the Church’s perennial teaching leaves us in no question as to how to approach these topics in the moral life.
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