At the prompting of several friends from the Catholic traditionalist and apologetics community, I started writing this piece — unsure exactly what I feel compelled to write, not knowing where we will end up. I suspect this will be more personal reflection than apologetics or canon law.
Approximately 14 years ago, I quietly retired from canon law and apologetics. Everything looked promising between the SSPX and Rome. Pope Benedict XVI was in office, and in 2009 he lifted the excommunication against the four SSPX bishops. This papal act negated my licentiate thesis in canon law and much of my apologetics writing on the topic.
Two years prior to lifting the excommunications, the Holy Father had promulgated Summorum Pontificum, permitting widespread celebration of the 1962 Roman Missal. Lastly, in the autumn of 2012, the SSPX received Rome’s blessing to expel notorious hardliner, conspiracy theorist, and antisemite Bishop Richard Williamson from its organization.
I was happy to see Williamson gone, greatly diminishing his toxic influence within the traditionalist movement. Having been present at a confirmation Mass in Toronto during the early 1990s where he publicly and notoriously denied the Holocaust, while on one of his infamous antisemitic tirades, I left the SSPX after my complaints about the incident to SSPX superiors at the time went nowhere. My Evangelical Protestant friend accompanying me that day never again set foot in a Catholic church.
Back to early 2013. All sides — Rome, Écône, and glumly the Williamson-led Resistance — agreed an accord between the Holy See and the SSPX regularizing the Society’s canonical status would soon follow. I felt my work was obsolete as a canonist and Catholic apologist who specialized in the SSPX fallout following Archbishop Lefebvre’s unlawful 1988 episcopal consecrations.
I was grateful to the Holy Spirit for the rapprochement. Although my children and I had recently transferred to my wife’s Eastern Catholic Church, I planned to visit my former SSPX parish once the SSPX and the Holy See signed a formal agreement. Thus I left behind canon law and apologetics to spend more time with my growing family, as well as explore other hobbies and interests such as traditional Eastern Catholic liturgy and spirituality, iconography, East-West ecumenism, all-season camping, my childhood dream of refereeing professional wrestling, motorcycling, and judo.
From 2013 on, this became my private family life until about three months ago. I happened to be in Saskatoon, probably for a judo or indoor soccer tournament, enjoying an early St. Valentine’s Day beer and fantasy-themed burger with my wife at the city’s famous Goblin Grill restaurant when Fr. Davide Pagliarani announced the SSPX would consecrate new bishops. Ironically, less than a year earlier I had been visiting Saskatoon, enjoying an early lunch at the similarly renowned Broadway Café — a classic prairie diner — with a priest-friend who happens to be a former SSPX seminarian, when the conclave elected Pope Leo XIV. (Oh yeah, another hobby I picked up after retiring from Catholic apologetics is reviewing inexpensive local Canadian restaurants.)
The incoming texts and messages were immediate.
What do you make of the SSPX’s proposed consecrations? Are these different from the 1988 consecrations? Or will Rome excommunicate the SSPX again?
I will not go into the particulars of canon law or apologetics. Not much has changed in either area since the SSPX’s 1988 episcopal consecrations. At least not when it comes to consecrating bishops without papal mandate or the Church interpreting the aforementioned as a schismatic act.
Pope Leo XIV, the successor of St. Peter currently reigning as the Church’s Supreme Pontiff, has clearly expressed to the SSPX that their proposed consecrations lack his papal mandate. In fact, quite the opposite — should the SSPX proceed, they would be consecrating bishops against the clearly expressed will of the Church’s highest authority. Thus the intended consecrations are necessarily interpreted by the Church as a schismatic act. When consecrating bishops, a papal mandate is necessary for the consecrations to be lawful and in communion with the Church.
Should the SSPX proceed with its consecrations, the Holy See will likely excommunicate the participating bishops for schism — both those who preside over the episcopal consecrations and those who receive them — much like Rome did following the SSPX’s 1988 episcopal consecrations (prior to Pope Benedict XVI lifting the excommunications in 2009), and Bishop Williamson’s episcopal consecration of Jean-Michel Faure in 2015.
For those interested in exploring the relevant canons and Catholic apologetics in more depth, I will refer you back to my published work from that era, as well as the more current work of Catholic apologetics tag-team John Salza and Robert Siscoe. Like me, they started out as Catholic apologists more likely to defend the SSPX than critique the Society. As with me, exchanges and debates with sedevacantists appear to have become a catalyst for the duo delving more deeply into the Church’s traditional ecclesiology.
Earlier today, I was blessed to attend an online Q&A with Salza hosted by TradRecovery.com. This was my first contact with either him or Siscoe that I can recall in at least 15 years, though my memory is likely off. It was an impromptu decision on my part, given my experiencing a rare weekend without kids’ activities or sports tournaments.
As of this writing, approximately five weeks before the date given by the SSPX for its intended consecrations, Salza and I are not in full agreement on all the minutiae of canon law and apologetics concerning the SSPX’s present canonical status. I believe the SSPX’s status as schismatic was lifted and the Society restored to full communion with the Church, albeit irregularly, when Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications, especially since Pope Francis subsequently extended limited faculties to the SSPX. Salza shared reasoned arguments as to why he believes the SSPX is currently in schism, while individuals who attend the SSPX must be considered on an individual basis.
Also present for the Q&A was Anna, a canon law student from my alma mater who similarly wrote her licentiate paper on the SSPX. I apologize that I did not catch Anna’s last name. She seemed to agree the SSPX’s current canonical status is much more nuanced than that of other traditionalist orders that have broken communion with Rome. Given that Anna is close to completing graduate studies in canon law while I am in my 15th year of retirement from canon law, I assume her academic and professional knowledge is more current.
Regardless, any difference of opinion between Salza and me on the SSPX’s current canonical status becomes moot should the SSPX proceed with its intended consecrations against the express will of Pope Leo XIV.
Yet for me the bigger fear is the manifestation of “psychological schism.” This is a fear first expressed by my late acquaintance Fr. Paul Aulagnier — the seminarian who first convinced Archbishop Lefebvre to come out of retirement in the early 1970s, who co-founded the SSPX with Lefebvre, and who became the first seminarian ordained by the SSPX (and if my memory is correct, the only seminarian ever licitly ordained for the Society).
Fr. Aulagnier warned against this danger in an interview he gave to Luc Gagnon and me for the Wanderer back in September 2003. In it, Father explains as follows why he supported the Campos traditionalists (including Bishop Rangel, ordained by the SSPX) reconciling with Rome, and why he advocated so strongly for the SSPX to reach a similar deal:
“The Church is a visible and hierarchical society,” Fr. Aulagnier states. “If one lives too long in an autarchy, one ends up losing the meaning of what a hierarchy is. We are thus in danger, the time passing and the opposition remaining, of forgetting Rome and organizing ourselves more and more outside of Rome. This needs to be acknowledged.
“This is why we must always remain in contact with Rome, not only for them to progress in the right direction, but unceasingly to remind ourselves of their good memory. We are of the flock. If we remain satisfied with our situation, then there is a danger of ‘psychological schism.’ The young people are of my opinion. I call it as it is. The SSPX leadership thinks I exaggerate, but our younger generations have never known a normal ecclesiastical situation. Thus I have accepted ‘this Canadian exile’ for my ideas.”
Nearly a quarter century has passed since Fr. Aulagnier expressed this fear in 2003. And almost 40 years have passed — 40 being a biblical generation — since the 1988 consecrations. There are now third- and fourth-generation SSPX adherents. For them the SSPX’s current state is normal. They have never experienced a normal parish life within the local diocesan structure in communion with the diocesan bishop and the Bishop of Rome.
Unlike the faithful who remained attached to the SSPX following the 1988 consecrations — who had grown up in local diocesan parishes prior to joining the SSPX — I share Fr. Aulagnier’s fear: today’s second-, third-, and fourth-generation adherents, having grown up in SSPX structures, lack the same psychological attachment to the local parish, the diocesan bishop, and regular and visible communion with St. Peter’s successor.
And thus my gut feeling tells me that, should the SSPX proceed with its intended episcopal consecrations on July 1, the schism this time around will likely be more permanent than it was in 1988. To draw an analogy from my other experience as a canonist — that of various positions within the diocesan marriage tribunal — 1988 was a hotly contested divorce in which both sides sought sole custody of the children. In contrast, both sides in 2026 seem to accept that the relationship is broken, current differences appear irreconcilable, and any offspring caught in the middle are now adults with their own children who have chosen sides.
The only way I foresee averting permanent schism, like that of the Old Catholics following the First Vatican Council, is divine intervention or a miraculous and intergenerational change of heart.
St. Peter, St. Pius X, and St. John Paul II, orate pro nobis.
Image: Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X, in Ecône (Riddes), Switzerland. By Moumine – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4391047
Pete Vere is a canonist, author, and catechist. His books include Surprised by Canon Law (volumes 1 & 2), More Catholic Than The Pope, and Annulments: 100 Questions and Answers. Pete and wife Sonya are blessed with seven children. In his spare time Pete enjoys camping with his family, riding his Indian Scout motorcycle, and refereeing professional wrestling.
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