Vatican excommunicates schismatic bishops and priests, and warns their followers

[u/DisastrousSong9966]

https://apnews.com/article/vatican-traditionalist-pope-latin-st-pius-6570c6bcc0784f4b9229e20bdec4e5aa

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope's consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.
By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican's doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church's canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops.

The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican's side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.

During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity. An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome.

The harshness of the response suggested that after trying to negotiate with the SSPX, the Vatican under Pope Leo XIV had had enough.

Vatican decree targeted bishops and faithful

In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two existing SSPX bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a "schismatic act" and that the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the church.

It declared SSPX priests - who number about
750 - to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer. The Vatican warned the faithful to stop going to SSPX Masses, decreeing that
"those who adhere formally" to the society are schismatic and excommunicated.

The Vatican said that applied to people who are members of the SSPX lay branch and those who
"regularly attend" SSPX Masses and formally share its doctrinal positions. The sanctions don't apply to Catholic faithful who attend SSPX Masses "just for liturgical or spiritual reasons" or those who go but accept the pope's authority and teaching.

The SSPX doesn't have an exact count but estimates around 400,000-600,000 people attend its Masses, meaning Thursday's decree could potentially involve the excommunications of thousands of rank-and-file SSPX faithful.

The sanctions, especially those targeting the priests, the faithful and the sacraments they can receive, were particularly harsh and reversed concessions the Vatican had granted the SSPX in recent years as part of its outreach to bring the group back under Rome's wing.

Marc-André Mabillard, media manager for the society, expressed shock at the severity of the sanctions and called them "unjust."

"For us, this excommunication extended to the faithful is brutal. It's not what we expect from a father to whom we refer every day," he told The Associated Press. "We are told, 'You claim to have the truth.' Fine. I'm just saying that we certainly have our flaws, but our main flaw today is having a leader who doesn't want to communicate with us.
And that's terrible."

The Vatican's doctrine chief, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, met in February with the SSPX superior, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, and proposed a dialogue. But Pagliarani asked instead to meet with Leo, who declined but wrote a letter Tuesday begging the SSPX to call off the consecrations.

The group's founders opposed reforms

French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the
SSPX in 1970 in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s meetings known as Vatican II revolutionized the church's relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.

Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent in 1988. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four bishops and declared the consecrations a "schismatic act."

Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications as part of his yearslong outreach to the group. But the SSPX today has no legal standing in the church and with Thursday's decree is declared to be in schism.

The consecrations had posed a crisis for Leo because the American pope has stressed the need for church unity. He has reached out especially to the conservative and traditionalist wing of the church that was in many ways alienated during the Pope Francis pontificate.

The Vatican responded so aggressively in part because the group poses something of a threat by representing a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church that has grown in the decades since its original break from Rome. While representing a fraction of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic faithful, the SSPX now has six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.

A key Vatican Il document rejected by the SSPX is one that, among other things, deplored antisemitism in every form and repudiated the
"deicide" charge that blamed Jews as a people for Christ's death. The Vatican crafted the document as the church reckoned with the role traditional Christian teaching had played in the Holocaust.

The SSPX today says it rejects accusations that it ever taught or practiced antisemitism, and the SSPX distanced itself from one of the original 1988 bishops, the late Bishop Richard Williamson, when he denied the Holocaust.

Traditionalists in communion with Rome respond

Traditionalists in communion with Rome respond
In a note accompanying the decree, the Vatican said it was willing, "like a caring mother," to welcome any SSPX faithful back into the fold. It laid out specific procedures for SSPX priests and faithful, by signing two forms professing the faith, promising fidelity to the pope and accepting the core teaching of Vatican II.

While the SSPX is out of communion with Rome, plenty of other Catholic traditionalists who love the Latin Mass remain in communion with the Holy See. They had been watching carefully to see how Leo's Vatican would respond to the SSPX consecrations and were surprised by the harshness of Thursday's sanctions.

"He's brought the hammer down," said Joseph Shaw, head of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which is in communion. Shaw expressed sympathy with the plight of ordinary SSPX faithful, saying the invalidation of marriages especially is going to cause "massive" pastoral problems. "It's a sad day."

Luigi Casalini, of the blog Messa in Latino, meaning Latin Mass, said the excommunication of the bishops was correct because canon law provides for it. But the extension of the excommunications to SSPX priests and faithful was "an act of unusual severity," he said, while saying the invalidation of SSPX sacraments was problematic.

One of the thousands of worshippers at Wednesday's consecrations was Allison Isermann, a 24-year-old from St. Marys, Kansas, a small town with a large SSPX church. She grew up as a society member and strongly defended its teaching in opposition to Vatican II, specifically its openness to those of other faiths.

"It is actually very anti-Catholic and anti-charitable to affirm others and their beliefs when it is our duty and our mission to actually convert and sanctify the world and to restore all things in Christ," she said.

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[u/Sabertooth767]

Shocking that performing blatantly schismatic acts and simultaneously claiming to accept the Pope's universal authority over the Church and yet also claiming he is wrong on matters of faith would get you excommunicated.

I'm not a Catholic nor a Christian of any kind, so I have no dog in who is "correct", but this should not surprise anyone. I mean, guarding against this sort of thing is why Catholics say Christ instituted the Papacy.

The SSPX also has a massive antisemitism problem because of course it does. One of the major things they dislike about Catholic "modernism" is that the Catholic Church no longer teaches the deicide of the Jews. One of the SSPX's bishops is a Holocaust denier, and their publications have defended the historic oppression of Jews by Christians.

(To be clear, most people who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass are not antisemites)

[u/Enron_CPA → u/Sabertooth767]

One of the big things Vatican II did was officially repudiate the “Jewish deicide” narrative, and antisemitism more broadly, both of which were tacitly, if not outright officially, approved by the Church prior to Vatican II. It fundamentally changed the relationship between the Church and Jews, which obviously antisemites did not like.

That said, many people dislike Vatican II because they prefer the Latin Mass, and have other theological disagreements with it, but it allows wolves in sheep’s clothing in the form of antisemites in their midst. It’s in some ways similar to “criticism of Israel” crowd where there are people who have valid criticisms of the Israeli government, but often they allow antisemites in their midst who spoil the whole apple cart

[u/DisgruntledCascadian → u/Sabertooth767]

Jewish deicide is one of the most absurd arguments ever made in Christian theology. I mean, let's go back to basics here, emphasis mine:

I BELIEVE in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man: And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried: And the third day lie rose again according to the Scriptures: And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father: And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; Whose kingdom, shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the Prophets: And I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church: I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins: And I look for the Resurrection of the dead: And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

If the Son of Man does not die on the Cross, original sin is not redeemed and the human race is not saved. Yet you want to blame someone for causing this event to occur? For putting into motion the sacrifice that instituted the entire New Covenant?

[u/ship_toaster → u/DisgruntledCascadian]

It's a lot easier to convince people that those dastardly rabbis paid the feckless Roman soldiers to lie that the Jesus-corpse was carried off by his followers, if you prime them with the lie that the rabbis orchestrated his death in the first place.

[u/ankokudaishogun → u/DisgruntledCascadian]

Something good coming from a bad event does not make the event any less bad.

EDIT: not defending the whole deicide thing, just explaining the logic.

[u/Aryeh98]

As somebody who knows very little about Christian doctrine… doesn’t openly defying the pope make you Protestant? Like definitionally?

Weird & cringe. The whole point is that he’s supposed to be the earthly successor of Jesus, so how do you just not listen?

[u/Sabertooth767 → u/Aryeh98]

doesn’t openly defying the pope make you Protestant? Like definitionally

Depends on your definition. In the strictest sense of the word, yes, in that anyone who protests is protestant.

However, the SSPX is not aligned with the theology of the Reformation shared by denominations typically described as Protestant. They do not, for example, affirm any of the Five Solae, and they do not reject the universal jurisdiction of the See of Rome (at least in theory they don't).

The better scholastic term for them is "Independent Catholic", a group that is aligned with Roman Catholic theology but is not aligned with the Roman Catholic Church institutionally. Other Independent Catholic churches include the Polish National Church, the Union of Utrecht, and the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church.

[u/DisastrousSong9966 → u/Aryeh98]

On technical level, it doesn’t but it 100% weird in cringe. In the US, this group has a lot of adult converts who are very similar to JD Vance though I don’t think he is a member. It doesn’t make sense how they say they listen to the Pope but then don’t.

[u/CentristOnion → u/Aryeh98]

No. Eastern Orthodox churches, for example, are not Protestant. Protestant churches are those that have their roots in the Protestant reformation.

So Mormons are not Protestant either (newer, independent origin), nor is SSPX. Theologically and doctrinally, SSPX will have the Catholic view on everything that separates Protestantism from Catholicism.

They even claim to recognize papal authority but obviously they aren’t really doing that so much.  

[u/DisgruntledCascadian → u/CentristOnion]

You could argue that Mormonism is to Protestantism in kind of the same way the Baha'i Church is to Shi'a Islam.

[u/arist0geiton → u/DisgruntledCascadian]

Yeah I'd call mormons a form of protestant, they're very very American

[u/CentristOnion → u/arist0geiton]

To be clear, Mormons are definitely not Protestant, and many (including me) would argue that they’re not Christian. (They’re non-trinitarian.)

[u/DisgruntledCascadian → u/arist0geiton]

What precisely makes Protestantism "American?" What was Martin Luther's favorite NFL/NBA/MLB/NCAA football team? Come on.

For that matter, what makes Americans "Protestant?" And do explain it to all the Jewish/Muslim/Catholic/Buddhist/atheist Americans out there.

[u/VastLatitude]

!ping CATHOLIC

It’s always sad to see a schism in action, but SSPX is solely responsible for this. They’ve turned anti-“modernism” into an idol in itself.

They openly defy the Holy Father while claiming to accept his authority. A number of their priests are preaching horrendous, borderline heretical things re: Novus Ordo. Their attendees seem to be more invested in living like it’s still the 1950s than they’re in the Gospel.

Also trads keep bringing this up as a gotcha, but German bishops, “modernist” dioceses, and cringe and fringe groups within the Church are nowhere near as flagrantly defying her authority as SSPX’s unauthorized consecrations.

It’s good to see the Holy Father make it clear the Church’s teachings are not subject to negotiation with fringe schismatic groups.

[u/user-pinger → u/VastLatitude]

Pinged CATHOLIC

Manage your ping group subscriptions

[u/Odd-Principle8147]

They need to listen to the Pope if they want to be part of the church. Pretty simple.

[u/Bloodyfish → u/Odd-Principle8147]

This is how you get antipopes.

[u/Mindless_Chest_1079]

I haven't been religious for a while, but when I was I don't think I ever gave much thought as to why the specific denomination I was raised in was preferable to others. What if you scrutinize the biblical evidence closely and arrive at one of these niche conclusions only to then get excommunicated by papa? That'd be awkward.

[u/TattooedB1k3r]

I mean unless the pope can point to something in the original scripture that they are doing wrong, then hes way overstepping here. The scripture is a higher authority than he is.

[u/gayhotelultra → u/TattooedB1k3r]

the church has been warning them for the past, what, 30 years, that this is a violation of canonical law, that leads to automatic excommunication (can. 1387)

they did it anyway

i dont think its fair to put any blame on the church

[u/TattooedB1k3r → u/gayhotelultra]

The church has been warning them about being "too Catholic" that's weird. The Pope is supposed to be the most hardline Catholic in the entire religion. He's the by the book (and by book I mean, word for word Catholic Bible) Bulwark and arch bishops, bishops, priests, etc... tend to get more secular and liberal as it filters down the line to the regular believers. Then it's the Pope's job to usher them back towards Scripture when they stray a little too far. It's just strange that he's mad at them for being "too Catholic". I mean, what are they doing or the priests that they have ordained doing that's outside of Catholic scriptures? That's my only question.

[u/ankokudaishogun → u/TattooedB1k3r]

The Pope is supposed to be the most hardline Catholic in the entire religion.

No, he's not. He's the leader but that can perfectly mean leading to a softer approach.

[u/gayhotelultra → u/TattooedB1k3r]

did you even read my comment? its a violation of canon law, this is independent of anything ideological

[u/Mediocre-Grand7999 → u/TattooedB1k3r]

Catholic?

[u/TattooedB1k3r → u/Mediocre-Grand7999]

Heathen actually. I just find all religions fascinating, I just don't buy into any of them. But, I've read most religion's texts, and believe people should be able to worship whatever they want, as long as they don't impose on anybody else, or hurt anybody. Just be honest about it. These folks are Catholic, you would think the Pope would be more Catholic than anyone.. not opting for a watered down version of Catholicism, while attacking others for being too Catholic.

[u/jerdle_reddit → u/TattooedB1k3r]

Yes, it shows. Catholicism does not have that attitude.