Rome and the SSPX: What Now?
As the SSPX declared their intent to illegally consecrate four bishops, people kept asking me if I would write on it. If you’ll notice, I didn’t write about it here. I wrote one article at The Pillar that was only tangentially about the consecrations, and more about my belief that tradition is worth fighting for while remaining in communion with Rome. I declined mostly because I felt I couldn’t add anything unique to the discourse. Everyone knows I’m sympathetic to the SSPX but opposed the consecrations, and everyone knows the reasons why. What’s the point? Now that the consecrations have occurred and the decrees have been issued, a lot of people are asking one question: what now? I hope here I can provide something useful.
The first point of order is that one can accept and side with Rome on this, while still thinking they handled this poorly. Yes, Leo should have met with the SSPX. His final appeal was far too little, far too late. There was little to lose in such a meeting, and much to potentially gain. If nothing else, Leo could have taken the mantle of an energetic father who cast aside his persona to try to save the family. Instead he farmed out the work to subordinates. While I do not think the actual negotiations were done poorly or in bad faith, it was such low hanging fruit not taking it was a real missed opportunity. Now there will be endless debate throughout history if Leo could have done more, rather than taking 15 minutes out of six months to prove he could not.
While one need not find fault with the negotiations, one can certainly find fault with how Rome responded after the consecrations. The excommunication, explanatory note, and then the abjuration of errors for both the laity and priests attached to the Society are clearly the work of a committee lacking any formal vision, in some cases directly competing with each other. The decree of excommunication was correctly limited to the Bishops and their consecrators, as they were the ones guilty of a crime. The explanatory note (which while potentially interesting is not authoritative in and of itself) quotes a 1996 decision which says it can be reasonably inferred that the clerics in the Society “formally adhere” to the rupture, and would probably also be subject to the excommunication. The 2026 explanatory note did away with the probably, making clear that those priests who remained with the Society shared the fate of the Bishops. This warning was also given to the laity, again referencing the 1996 document. It is possible for the laity to “formally adhere” to the schism, but Rome made clear bringing such a case against a lay faithful who attends an SSPX chapel is an incredibly high bar. After this a formula of abjuration was released for clerics and laity.
In this world, how is producing a document that laity should sign not undermining that guidance? Since there will be few if any cases brought against the laity, of what purpose is the document? It is performative. The DDF continued this performative approach by announcing that all Society Confessions and marriages are now invalid. This would seem to make sense, in that the sacraments require faculties those likely excommunicated clerics now lack. There’s only one problem with this: those faculties came from papal edict. An explanatory note cannot take the place of papal edict. The only way those faculties can be revoked is by papal act.
While one may presume this has happened, it would certainly be easy to produce the decree if it did. We also have a very high profile case where a curial prefect got ahead of himself and did something illegal. During the implementation of Traditionis custodes, Dicastery for Divine Worship Prefect Arthur Roche informed bishops that all permission for the TLM must go through him. Almost every Bishop told him to pound sand and ignored his decree. As this back and forth intensified, The Pillar asked a simple question: does Roche have the authority to do this? Because it doesn’t look like he does. His Eminence loudly asserted his authority, and within 72 hours Pope Francis changed Church law, revoking the right of Bishops to govern liturgical matters in their diocese whenever the TLM was involved. Roche’s action was legal only after that decree. As a result, the legitimacy of Traditionis custodes was severely undermined, and many of the people Pope Francis needed the most were now implacable foes of the decree. If we want priests and lay faithful to stop defending the Society, we should not violate Church law and transparency in the process. I fully suspect within the next week or two Pope Leo will publicly revoke the previous authority Francis bestowed on the SSPX. It will be logical and proper, yet the way it has been handled so far has been neither.
The SSPX position has been no better. As Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society noted, there is a shocking indifference to the gray zone the flocks of the SSPX now find themselves in. They are in a true canonical limbo in many cases. They seem not to care, but then they write letters professing their fidelity to the Church and their desire to help the faithful. One new Bishop also gave a homily which was, let us dispense with the nice rhetoric, proximate to heresy. When speaking of the hierarchal Church whose mandate he felt was unneeded for his consecration, the new Bishop Michael Goldade said the following:
It kills the supernatural life, the sources of grace & has placed man in the place of God.
One can say that he simply means that the crisis in the Church is draining the Church of her vibrancy, which is a true enough statement. Yet the “sources of grace” for the Catholic Church are the sacraments. The Catholic Church has extensively litigated if the bad behavior and beliefs of clerics in otherwise good standing invalidates the sacraments, and has condemned any who profess that. That he spent the first hour of his episcopate seeming to relitigate this very ancient question is not a sign that the SSPX is headed in a good direction. He sounded a lot like former SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, who was expelled from the Society and spent the last few years of his life as an internet Bishop consecrating dubious priests for a box of Cracker Jacks.
I labor at length about the errors of everyone involved here because we need to see clearly before we can proceed. The very first thing the Society and the Church (both its clerics and its members, up to and including the Pope) should do is an examination of conscience. Have you, by acts of commission or omission, made this schism possible or easier? What must now change?
The very first priority should be towards the faithful in the pews. While the abjuration formula used is mostly performative, within that formula there is a path forward. In it the Church requires very little about Vatican II to be accepted. She only requires that what is taught in Lumen Gentium 25 (on the nature of the magisterium and papal authority, even when not speaking ex cathedra) be believed. The Church is not treating the SSPX as heretics in their “rejection” of Vatican II. She is treating them as in schism because the Society refuses to accept the ability of the Church to bind and loose when it applies to them, and them alone.
The decree also makes clear there are areas of Vatican II and subsequent reforms which can be difficult to reconcile with tradition, and there is even the possibility they cannot. In this situation, one is to undertake a respectful and positive discussion within the Church, and to at the very least hold that, even if something else should be done, these things can be reconciled in some form with previous tradition. This formula is remarkably similar to what Archbishop Lefebvre at first signed with the Catholic Church, and later reneged on. One can easily say Vatican II happened, and while it did not teach error, it also did not teach the full truth, which can be done going forward. This will become the default position as Vatican II is claimed by Father Time, and like all ecumenical councils its shortcomings can be not only discussed but accepted. We must internalize this if we are to bring about reconciliation.
We must also undo anything that unncessarily stands in the way to reunion. The Church has made clear in its abjuration formula to priests that they can remain attached to the TLM, so long as they accept that profession. While it does not say they can continue to celebrate it, it is inevitable that there will be a priest who returns to full communion under a Bishop and is allowed to celebrate the TLM. Once that is done, it will be a fair question to ask why that individual priest is allowed something but the otherwise obedient diocesan priest isn’t. The same goes for the laity. After the excommunication, Archbishop Earl Hebda implored any SSPX follower in his diocese to come to one of the Latin Masses he has established. Traditionis custodes currently says that it is the goal of the Catholic Church to eradicate the TLM, and leave it as a piece of history, an artifact of a time when Catholics were not united in worship. You cannot appeal to the SSPX effectively so long as Traditionis exists as law. The Bishops might believe it is about Dignitatis Humanae. The priests might. The overwhelming majority of laity who attend are there for the TLM. I know and appreciate individuals who say that Leo decisively overruling his predecessor sets a bad precedent, as the TLM becomes a hot potato every new pope will restrict or permit based on his personal mood. I would ask them to consider an alternative reality: Traditionis is dying on the vine, and its failure is already being judged, and will be judged for all time. At some point a good father and good leader has to be able to admit something isn’t working.
I offer no advice to the SSPX because I am not with them, and never have been. They have chosen a side that I am not on. I can only offer advice to my fellow Catholics who remain in communion with Rome: schisms have historically been exacerbated and sometimes entirely driven by the bad behavior of the Church. This remains so even if the schismatic is guilty of his own sin. If we truly take unity seriously, then we must look not only for what we must uphold, but what we must let go to achieve unity. The first thing to go should be our egos. After that, unity can take root.
You are right to point out that the stated intent and object of Traditionis Custodes is to eradicate the Latin mass. A goal that Cardinal Sarah (not a traditionalist) described in January of 2025 as a "diabolical project". It is not merely to restrict it.
Sacrosanctum Concilium did not call for changes to the Latin mass because it had any theological deficiencies - the call for changes was to make the Catholic mass more accessible to modern man. It is important to remember that point. That is why Pope Benedict XVI could say regarding both Missals of the Roman Rite that "the realm of the sacral is the same, the liturgy is the same."
Your analysis is sound, the theological differences between the Church and the SSPX regarding Vatican II will resolve themselves over time. Meanwhile, for the laity, it is access to Latin mass that is important.
For the SSPX the two Missals are seen as irreconcilable. With Traditionis Custodes, the Church appears to unwittingly agree with the SSPX. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Latin mass from a theological or dogmatic standpoint. That is why TC needs to be repealed.
I believe a useful first step might be for Leo to attack the abuses that crept into the Novus Ordo Missae after 1970. Truthfully alleging a defense of the authentic aims of Vatican II, he could mandate the return of altar rails, Missa ad orientem semper, males only in the sanctuary, reception of the Eucharist on the tongue, and the use of Latin at least for the canon of the Mass. Were he to do this at the same time as repealing Traditions C, it would go a long way toward dispelling the suspicion that he's a partisan of Francis' gravely serious errors, an impression afield after a year or so of his papacy. I've never attended SSPX chapels but I firmly believe that Bergoglio was the worst, most damaging Pope in Catholic history. I'm well aware of the crimes of previous Popes like John XII, but they simply never had the mediatic reach of the Argentinian. (As an aside, it puzzles me why the SSPX never reacted more strongly than it did to Francis' disastrous pontificate. He bordered on being a crypto Protestant!)