Bishop Morerod Clarifies . . . Nothing

In an attempt to clarify the recent restriction of Catholic churches to the alternate use of Anglicans, Calvinists, Lutherans, and other groups outside of the Church (while declining the SSPX a similar privilege), His Excellency seems to have missed the point.

Rorate has the update:

First of all, differently from the Orthodox or Protestants who can use the churches of the diocese under certain conditions and in case of need (for instance, because they do not have a nearby church, or due to works in their own church, this possibility often being reciprocal), the priests of the SSPX present themselves as Catholic.[*] The dialogue with the SSPX is not properly speaking "ecumenical", but an internal dialogue. What is, then, the situation of the SSPX priests in the Catholic Church?

...

They are, in fact, priests ordained in an illicit manner, and no Catholic priest whose ministry is illicit - whether or not he is a member of the SSPX - may celebrate in a Catholic church, unless, of course, he be reconciled with the Church.

The difficulty proper to these priests, compared to Orthodox priests or Protestant pastors, is that their ministry in fact contributes - perhaps not in their intent - to divide the Catholic Church from the inside. And it is precisely regarding this point that my anxiety has grown in the course of the past few months. I was already horrified that a bishop of the SSPX had published a book repeatedly accusing Pope Benedict XVI of being heretical (Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, L’étrange théologie de Benoît XVI, Avrillé, 2010). This could nonetheless be an isolated viewpoint that did not engage the Society as such, even if coming from one of its bishops. The same applies to the famous declarations of Bp. Williamson, which was confirmed by his exclusion from the SSPX.

We get that. If a bishop wants to ban the SSPX from using local parish facilities, he certainly has the authority to do so. But why do so, yet provide the same facilities to those outside the Church? And do so in the same breath?

Guys like St. Ambrose defied the Emperor to make sure that Catholic churches weren't used by Arians. Isn't it a bit weird to see denominations that were conceived essentially as a rejection of what the Church Herself is being allowed this kind of access?

It is tough to get more bizarre than this.