Those sympathetic to the Society of St. Pius X will remind you that the Church has never formally declared the SSPX to be in schism. Arguably, this may be true. But the 1988 episcopal consecrations carried out by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre were deemed a “schismatic act” by Pope St. John Paul II in Ecclesia Dei, and Pope Francis described the situation as a “split.” Nevertheless, the absence of a formal declaration — as well as various accommodations and fraternal gestures over the years — is not evidence of full communion. It is evidence of Rome’s patience and commitment to Church unity.

That patience is now being tested again. On February 2, 2026, SSPX Superior General Fr. Davide Pagliarani announced that the Society will consecrate new bishops on July 1, 2026, without papal approval. This is a repeat of the act that led to the excommunication of Lefebvre and the other bishops affiliated with the SSPX in 1988, and it raises the question that has followed the SSPX for decades. At what point does a group that refuses submission to the pope, maintains its own hierarchy, and actively discourages its faithful from participating in the sacramental life of the wider Church cross the line from “irregular canonical status” into outright schism?

Canon 751 defines schism as “the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” Consider what the SSPX does in practice. It does not submit to the pope or to local bishops in matters of Church discipline. It sets up its own chapels and ordains priests without the permission of the Church authorities. It regularly condemns the teachings of post-conciliar popes on matters of faith and morals. The priests of the SSPX actively discourage people from attending not only the reformed Vatican II Mass (described on their website as “a danger to the faith of the faithful”), but they even warn them not to go to the Tridentine Mass when it is celebrated with the approval of the institutional Church. In their view, a licit TLM offered by an FSSP or diocesan priest is tainted by association with the post-conciliar hierarchy. If that is not a withdrawal of communion, I don’t know what is.

Failed opportunities for unity

The last, best chance for reconciliation was probably in 2012, when the SSPX was offered a personal prelature — with its own bishops — if its leaders would agree to a doctrinal preamble reflecting the 1989 Profession of Faith. In order to open dialogue with SSPX leadership, Pope Benedict XVI granted the group’s two preliminary demands: granting a “universal indult” allowing all Catholic priests of the Roman Rite to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missal and lifting the 1988 excommunications of the four living SSPX bishops.

Both gestures backfired. In January 2009, the Holy See lifted the excommunications, triggering an international backlash after it emerged that Bishop Richard Williamson had publicly denied the Holocaust on multiple occasions. Major outlets and commentators immediately criticized the pope’s decision, which caught the Vatican communications team flat-footed. Journalist John Allen described the Vatican’s handling of the controversy bluntly, saying it was “a colossal blunder, and one that’s frankly difficult to either understand or excuse.”

The decision also prompted public rebukes from the Jewish community and world leaders. Benedict and the Vatican communications team scrambled to do damage control in the days and weeks that followed. In a letter to the world’s bishops, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that the affair had unleashed “an avalanche of protests” and admitted that “consulting the information available on the internet” would have made it possible “to perceive the problem early on.” He added, “I have learned from this mishap that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news.” Soon after, Williamson was expelled from the SSPX and started his own group, known as “the Resistance,” and began ordaining even more priests and bishops illicitly.

Likewise, Benedict’s decision to liberalize the pre–Vatican II liturgy (which he dubbed the “Extraordinary Form”) through the document Summorum Pontificum produced consequences he did not intend. Rather than fostering reconciliation, the expanded use of the Tridentine liturgy increasingly became a rallying point for opposition to the postconciliar Church itself. In 2021, Pope Francis concluded that Benedict’s document had to be abrogated after years of relentless attacks by traditionalists (even those canonically in full communion with Rome) on papal authority and Church teachings promulgated since the 1960s. After consulting bishops worldwide, Francis concluded that what had been granted “to foster unity” was instead being “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church” (Letter to the Bishops). Francis wrote that he was “saddened” to find that attachment to the 1962 Missal was often “characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself,” and lamented that the very concession intended to help unify the Church had become a source of division, necessitating the restrictions laid out in Traditionis Custodes.

The sticking point, as it was in 1988 and remains today, is the third paragraph of the Professio Fidei, which requires granting religious submission of intellect and will to the pope’s ordinary magisterial teachings (cf. Canon 752). Ultimately, Bishop Bernard Fellay — then the SSPX Superior General and one of the bishops illicitly ordained by Lefebvre in 1988, and often described as the society’s “moderate” — refused.

That refusal was formalized in the revised “doctrinal preamble” Fellay sent back to Rome in April 2012, a response that effectively brought the negotiations to a close. While the original text drafted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was never published, the version attributed to Fellay and widely circulated at the time — dated April 15, 2012 — makes clear that what he returned was not a straightforward acceptance of the Holy See’s proposal, but a reworking of it. Rather than accepting the Holy See’s terms, Fellay’s version introduced interpretive conditions and qualifications — particularly regarding Vatican II and the postconciliar Magisterium — that materially altered the meaning of the required “religious submission of intellect and will.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ultimately concluded that his response was insufficient to resolve the underlying doctrinal rupture, and by mid-2012 the talks had stalled without agreement.

Since then, the trajectory has been away from Rome, not toward it. From its founding onward, SSPX leadership has never admitted wrongdoing or expressed regret for its conduct, and the society’s posture has grown more defiant over time. In past decades, SSPX leaders sought a place within the institutional Church — a personal prelature, albeit on their terms. Since 2012, that goal has increasingly given way to a stance that conditions reunion on the institutional Church’s repudiation of its alleged errors. Within this framework, the popes, the Council, and the post-conciliar Church are cast as the problem, while the SSPX presents itself as the faithful remnant waiting for Rome to renounce her errors.

A new generation, further from the Church

The man behind the announcement, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, is himself a sign of the SSPX’s generational shift. He entered the society’s seminary in 1989, at the age of 19 — a year after the illicit episcopal consecrations — and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Bernard Fellay in 1996. As a result, he has never exercised a recognized ministry in the Catholic Church; his entire priestly life has unfolded within the SSPX’s parallel structure, formed after the break with Rome. Unlike Archbishop Lefebvre, who served for decades as a priest, bishop, missionary, and religious superior within the institutional Church, Pagliarani has no formative experience of ecclesial life outside the society. And unlike the two superior generals he succeeded, Fr. Franz Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay, his overlap with Lefebvre was brief — Lefebvre died in 1991 — leaving Pagliarani’s frame of reference even further removed from the pre-rupture Church.

He does have one notable connection to the wider Church. As rector of the SSPX seminary in La Reja, near Buenos Aires, from 2012 to 2018, Pagliarani overlapped briefly with then-Archbishop Bergoglio, who led the archdiocese until his election as Pope Francis in 2013. The two are said to have had a cordial relationship. Pagliarani has no such connection with Pope Leo XIV, and it is worth considering whether the absence of that personal connection made it easier for him to announce these consecrations.

Pagliarani’s election in 2018 over Fellay was itself a signal. As Le Figaro reported, Fellay was “ousted” in favor of a candidate aligned with opposition to rapprochement with Rome. The anti-reconciliation wing prevailed. Since then, Pagliarani has repeatedly framed developments in the post-conciliar Church as symptoms of doctrinal error and institutional crisis.

Pagliarani described the Synod for the Amazon as a venue where “the abomination of idolatrous rites” and the “putrid fruits” of the Council were put on display, portraying the Instrumentum Laboris as hostile to Catholic worship and doctrine, and called for prayer and reparation in response. He has also denounced the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s document Mater Populi Fidelis, which restricts the use of the Marian titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix,” asserting that “to deny the title of Co-Redemptrix is tantamount to dethroning the Most Blessed Virgin” and that such restrictions “wound the Catholic soul in what is dearest to it,” reflecting his view that recent doctrinal clarifications from Rome are themselves part of the problem rather than legitimate exercises of magisterial authority.

This is not the language of a group seeking reunion.

A priest picking bishops

There is something inherently strange about a priest announcing and directing the consecration of bishops. In the Catholic Church, bishops govern and priests serve under them. Here, the relationship is reversed, and Pagliarani’s announcement fulfills Archbishop Lefebvre’s original vision: bishops would exist primarily to supply sacraments, while real authority would remain with the Superior General of the Society. Lefebvre was explicit that his bishops existed “to give ordinations and confirmations” and that they “neither received nor claimed any episcopal jurisdiction.” Pagliarani has reiterated the same position in his own words, insisting that the Society has “no intention whatsoever of granting any jurisdiction to its bishops,” and that episcopal consecrations serve no purpose beyond guaranteeing Holy Orders and Confirmation.

Male religious institutes typically have priests or brothers as superiors, and they do not appoint their own bishops, because they remain subject to the authority of the Church’s pastors. The SSPX’s need to consecrate and control its own bishops arises precisely because it has refused that submission. The result is an abnormal ecclesial structure in which bishops function as sacramental technicians, while a priest exercises de facto authority over them — a configuration that not only underscores a lack of unity with the institutional Church, but also a break with Catholic tradition.

Two of the original bishops consecrated by Lefebvre have died in recent years: Bishop Tissier de Mallerais in October 2024 and the previously expelled Bishop Williamson in January 2025. The two remaining bishops, Fellay and Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, are aged 67 and 69, respectively. Although SSPX leaders insist that new bishops are needed urgently, it should be noted that Archbishop Lefebvre was 82 at the time of the 1988 consecrations, and he was the only bishop in the SSPX at the time.

So the practical need is not as great as it was when Lefebvre decided to go forward. The SSPX’s standard justification — that it operates under a “state of necessity” that overrides normal canonical discipline — loses force with each passing decade, as the Society grows not in spite of the institutional Church but in deliberate opposition to it.

More than a matter of human resources, this is a deliberate assertion of autonomy. It is being ordered by a priest who has spent his entire career outside communion with Rome, and he is supported by priests with similar backgrounds.

The irony of ecumenism

Ironically, even though the SSPX loathes the post-conciliar Church’s commitment to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, it is precisely that commitment that has kept the Society tethered — however tenuously — to Rome for decades. Pope Francis extended faculties for confessions, provided a path for valid marriages, and maintained an open posture toward the SSPX even as its rhetoric grew more hostile and antagonistic. In this respect, the Church has continued to treat the SSPX much as it treats other separated Christians: with patience, charity, and an insistence that the door remain open.

That door remains open, at least for now. Pope Leo XIV has summoned Pagliarani to meet privately with Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, on February 12. It is worth recalling the mandate Pope Francis gave Fernández when he appointed him in July 2023: to guard the Church’s teaching “not as an enemy who critiques and condemns,” but in a way that fosters dialogue, unity, and growth. Francis explicitly contrasted this vision with earlier eras when the dicastery focused narrowly on policing “possible doctrinal errors,” reminding Fernández that differing theological currents, when engaged “in respect and love,” can serve the life of the Church.

There is a further irony in the fact that it is Fernández who has been tasked with engaging Pagliarani directly. Fernández has become a lightning rod among Catholic conservatives, and his theological approach has been sharply criticized by precisely the currents of thought Pagliarani represents. Pagliarani has repeatedly attacked the post-conciliar magisterium that Fernández has been charged with articulating and defending — from Amoris Laetitia to recent doctrinal clarifications on Marian devotion — portraying them not as authoritative teaching, but as symptoms of a Church in error.

That the two are now set to meet one-on-one underscores both the gravity and the improbability of the task before Fernández. The meeting will be a test not only of Fernández’s diplomatic skill, but of whether Francis’s vision of dialogue can bridge a rupture this deep. The minimum measure of success is straightforward: the SSPX would need to withdraw or indefinitely postpone the July consecrations. Anything less will only confirm how far removed the Society has drifted from the Church it claims to preserve.

Although the SSPX’s actions increasingly suggest a movement toward permanent rupture, Francis’s light touch — his refusal to simply sever ties, his insistence on dialogue over condemnation — may paradoxically represent the only remaining path back to unity. The Society walked away from concrete offers in 1988 and again in 2012. Today, it is led by a priest who has never known life in communion with the Church and who has chosen to consecrate new bishops for a movement that continues to drift further from Catholic unity with each passing year.

The faithful who attend SSPX chapels — many of whom are undoubtedly sincere Catholics striving to live the faith — deserve better. They deserve leaders willing to lead them home, not deeper into a schism that lacks only a formal decree.

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Image: Bishop Bernard Fellay and Fr. Davide Pagliarani, source: fsspx.news.