Originally published at The Crux
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It may sound paradoxical at first, but the defiant behavior of a schismatic clerical faction devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass may already be pushing the Church toward resolution of some fairly messy unfinished business left over from the Francis pontificate.
If you closely follow the chattering classes in virtual space, you may know what I am talking about.
If not, that’s okay.
The online Catholic world has been abuzz the past two weeks, over a strange and unhappy thing that happened in the foothills of the Swiss Alps on the first day of this month.
Basically, the breakaway traditionalist Priestly Society of St. Pius X – the SSPX – consecrated four bishops without a necessary papal mandate to do so and in defiance of repeated warnings from the Vatican and the pope himself not to go through with it.
If your reaction to the news was to ask, “What’s a traditionalist?” and “Who are the SSPX?” well, you belong to the roughly 99.472 percent of Catholics (according to this journalist’s fairly unscientific reckoning) who have darkened the door of a church in the past 40 years.
RELATED: SSPX declared schismatic, clerics excommunicated
In a very real and important
