[Question:]{.underline} Should I attend the Mass of a Thuc line priest?
[Answer:]{.underline} Traditional Catholics sometimes have the tendency of regarding their Sunday Mass as the place to receive the sacraments, and their priests consequently as sacrament vending machines. According to such a point of view, so long as the sacraments are valid, the rest does not matter. Let the priests argue about the details, but they do not concern the simple faithful, they say.
In this oversimplification there is a profound misunderstanding of the meaning of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary, applying it to souls in time and place. Consequently, it is the source of the spiritual life of the Church, and has a profound symbolism, inseparable from the effects that it produces on our souls. It symbolizes the unity of the Faith and of the Church, and is consequently necessarily a profession of Faith. This is the principal reason why the New Mass is always evil, regardless of the good intentions of the celebrant or of those in attendance: it lacks the perfection that it ought to have of being a Catholic profession of Faith, but is instead a profession of the Vatican II compromise with the errors of Protestantism and Modernism. That is why Protestants and Modernists have repeatedly said that they would have no difficulty in celebrating the New Mass although they have a great aversion to the traditional Mass.
To assist at Mass is, then, to make a profession of the Faith as held and taught by the one true Church. It is from this perspective that the status of the priest is of the greatest importance.
A priest who has no attachment to the Church`s hierarchy and who presently has no superior is called a wandering or independent priest, in Latin vagus. The Council of Trent legislated against such priests, which legislation is maintained by the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 111) and the 1983 Code (Canon 265), both of which state that such wandering priests are not at all to be accepted in the Church. Such priests, who do not have letters of recommendation from a superior or bishop, are not permitted to celebrate Mass (Canon 804 of the 1917 Code and Canon 903 of the 1983 Code). The reason for this is that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not a priest`s personal possession, but belongs to the Church. Without submission to a superior, there is no hierarchical order, no obedience, and no symbolism of the hierarchical unity of the Church. Of course, the situation is not the same for those good traditional priests who have been persecuted by their modernist superiors, and who retain their attachment to their diocese or religious community, although it may reject them, as was the case for the heroic priests who started the traditional movement and who were frequently but wrongly called “independent.”
Thuc line priests are those priests who have been ordained by one of the multitude of bishops that have arisen from the bishops consecrated in the 1980s by Archbishop Pierre-Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc. At the time of these Episcopal consecrations, Archbishop Thuc made clear sedevacantist statements, as have the other bishops from the line repeatedly. There is no hierarchy amongst them, nor amongst their priests, nor any attachment to the visible and hierarchical Church, nor any admission that there has been a Pope since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. Such statements are a denial of the visibility of the Church, and of union with true Catholics throughout the world. They are effectively schismatic.
Understanding the obvious scandal of such a position, some of the priests that are issue of this line have attempted to obscure the issue by maintaining that they are not sedevacantist at all, and that they accept Francis as the Pope. However, this claim is but a façade and hypocrisy. By accepting ordination by one of these bishops, they have made a public profession of sedevacantism, which must remain their public position until such time as they recant and place themselves under a Catholic bishop or superior. Consequently, the Masses that they celebrate and the sacraments that they administer are valid, but illicit. They are a false profession of Faith, a profession of separation from the visible Catholic Church, a public adhesion to the false theory of sedevacantism. Add to this that such Thuc line priests are truly wandering, having no superior on earth, and we have created an independent mentality that is entirely opposed to the Catholic spirit. This way leads to indifference to things sacred and to confusion, and certainly is no way to rebuild the Church, to restore all things in Christ, to strive for sanctity, to bring about the conversion of Rome to Tradition.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.