I'm not impressed

... that's really not what I was hoping for...

Here's the puzzling thing: why do they need their own lineage of bishops? It's not as though there were a shortage of bishops, proportionally speaking; and we can be sure they ackowledge the orders and jurisdiction of the standard-issue bishop; His Holiness' own orders are just as good as any's, right? Having apparently been elected Bishop of Rome, he's Bishop of Rome as soon as he's a Priest, so we must suppose that the SSPX agree on that point. So what is the episcopacial emergency requiring emergency consecration of bishops? I'm not about to suggest that the whole College is without some unpleasant characters, but we put away all kinds of Donatism a long while ago, didn't we?

And I don't think the SSPX think or want to think they're Donatists, either.

So, what can the emergency of Episcopate be?

A Bishop is a Priest, of course; but priests are also priests. Of Course. Bishops handle two sacraments in especial: Confirmation, and Orders. That is, Bishops level up Catholics, and Bishops make priests. The SSPX governance want to continue making priests, and presuming they want no schism, any Bishop ought to do as well as another, so what they're actually afraid of must be that Rome wouldn't let them have the priests they want? There are still a few monasteries out there, making priests for themselves on occasion, without benefit of Cloistered Bishops. (I've heard that some bishops still don't like the Benedictines, but that's neither here nor there...)

Well. The other Fraternity (I know, I know, tense relations) seems to get priests ordained, somehow. There are Bishops who like them. I've known a good few of them, and none of them were soft, in any sense. Maybe their days are numbered shorter than I would like to imagine.

St. Jude, pray for us.