OXFORD, England (OSV News) — Conservative Catholics have urged Church leaders to make better arrangements for traditionalists who remain loyal to the pope, after leaders of the breakaway Society of St. Pius X were excommunicated July 2 for consecrating bishops without papal approval.
“I don’t agree with their decision, and don’t consider it justified — however, they’ve acted according to conscience and it’s not for me to judge them,” said Joseph Shaw, chairman of the London-based Latin Mass Society which belongs to an international network of traditionalist groups.
“I nevertheless hope this will also lead to a change, reassuring those who don’t support the society’s action and wish to separate the liturgy from any thought of schism,” he added.
The lay Catholic spoke after the four new bishops from the society, also known as the SSPX or Lefebvrists, were declared excommunicated along with their two consecrating prelates in the wake of the July 1 liturgical celebration in Écône, Switzerland, attended by a thousand priests and up to 17,000 supporters.
In an OSV News interview, Shaw said his own Latin Mass Society had continued to cooperate with local bishops, despite recent challenges.
Many traditionalist groups remain faithful to Church
Meanwhile, the unauthorized consecrations were also criticized by a senior Dominican, who said the SSPX should not be confused with traditionalist groups who remained faithful to the Catholic Church.
“I have friends in the Society of St. Pius X, and know them as good people — and I’m very sad this tragic event has happened,” Father Dominic White, prior of Oxford University’s Blackfriars Hall, told OSV News.
“But being Catholic means being in full and regular communion, not signing some long list of doctrines. Christ didn’t just found a belief system — he founded a Church, and this is what they fail to understand.”
The consecration of Fathers Pascal Schreiber, Michael Goldade, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier had been livestreamed in six languages on the SSPX’s website, as part of a four-day festival which included the June 28 ordination of nine new priests and deacons from the Society’s Zaitzkofen seminary, Vatican News said.
Pope’s last-minute appeal to SSPX
In a last-minute appeal, published by the Vatican on June 30, the pope said the Catholic Church recognized the “apostolic zeal and desire for fidelity to tradition” of many SSPX supporters, but also warned the consecrations would constitute a schismatic act and “sin of extreme gravity.”
In a July 2 decree, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Doctrine of the Faith, along with two other doctrinal secretaries, said the SSPX had “committed an act of a schismatic nature” by consecrating the priests as bishops “without a pontifical mandate and against the will of the Supreme Pontiff.”
In his OSV News interview, Shaw said unauthorized episcopal consecrations often took place without media coverage, adding that another traditionalist clergy group, Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, based on the island of Orkney, had been warned by Scotland’s Diocese of Aberdeen against plans to ordain its own bishop July 26.
However, he added that the SSPX, with over 700 priests, was much larger and better resourced, and could “command world media attention.”
Some try to link Latin Mass Society with SSPX
“Ever since the SSPX first emerged, some people have tried to link us with them, claiming we are all just Lefebvrists too,” said the Latin Mass Society chairman, a philosophy professor.
“But the fact we share some of their views doesn’t mean we support them,” Shaw said.
Founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX celebrates the traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass predating the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, but also rejects the council’s liturgical changes and approaches to ecumenism and religious freedom.
In a joint February statement with the Latin Mass Society, another group, Una Voce International, said it did not share the SSPX’s “analysis of the crisis” in the Church.
Current obstacles to Latin Mass
However, it warned that current obstacles to the Latin Mass could strengthen support for the SSPX, and urged Catholic bishops to be “mindful of the pastoral realities” following Pope Francis’ “Traditionis Custodes,” issued in 2021.
In his OSV News interview, Father White said SSPX thinking was shaped in part by a “totalizing system of understanding the world” with some far-right antecedents long predating Vatican II.
However, he added that many supporters completely rejected extreme associations, and said he believed the pope should ask all bishops to make the Latin Mass available “at a convenient time and place” in their dioceses and also consider setting up an ordinariate for traditionalist Catholics accepting “doctrinal orthodoxy.”
Traditionalist movement is ‘very strong’
“The whole traditionalist movement is currently very strong and attracting many vocations,” said the Dominican priest, a canon law exponent.
“But the way these consecrations were handled, so publicly in a festival-like atmosphere, poses problems. If you don’t want to look like schismatics, then don’t behave like schismatics.”
The consecrations echo a 1988 crisis when Archbishop Lefebvre was declared excommunicated by St. John Paul II for appointing four bishops without his approval. The four bishops were also excommunicated by the pope, but their excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Fernández told Britain’s Catholic Herald weekly July 1 he also hoped dialogue with the SSPX would prove possible over time.
Jonathan Luxmoore writes for OSV News from Oxford, England.
