One of the stranger developments surrounding the illicit Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) episcopal consecrations on July 1 was the sudden outbreak of agreement among Catholics across the spectrum that the Society had gone too far — they had committed a schismatic act and had incurred automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church. On the eve of the Écône ceremony, Pope Leo XIV warned the SSPX of the consequences of following through with their plans. On the day after the consecrations, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the decree of excommunication and its explanatory note confirming that SSPX clergy are in schism. In the days and weeks since, diocesan bishops have warned the faithful not to attend SSPX liturgies and explained the illicit (and sometimes invalid) nature of their sacraments. Very few prominent figures outside the SSPX seem to have taken up their cause. The most conspicuous exceptions — Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who argued in advance that the consecrations would not be schismatic, and Bishop Joseph Strickland, who cast them as a response to a genuine “state of necessity” — occupy the fringe of the fringe, and the fact that the Society’s defense fell to them alone only confirms how isolated its position has become. Even prominent traditionalists and longtime critics of Pope Francis have condemned the Society’s actions.
For example, just weeks after the SSPX announcement, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said the SSPX must submit to the teaching authority of the Church “without preconditions.” Cardinal Robert Sarah asked how many souls would be lost because of this new division, and whether it is not “a betrayal of tradition” to take refuge in human means in order to preserve one’s own works, however good they may be. Cardinal Raymond Burke lamented the planned consecrations in late June, saying, “No situation justifies doing something that is intrinsically evil.” Traditionalist podcaster Taylor Marshall, who flirted publicly with the SSPX for years, released an episode titled “Why I Cannot Support the SSPX under Fr. Pagliarani.”
This is all good, as far as it goes. The consecration of bishops in direct defiance of the pope is such a brazen rejection of ecclesial authority that only the most committed Lefebvrists can pretend the SSPX has not consciously broken with the Catholic Church. The Vatican’s response was swift, clear, and difficult to explain away. Feeble and futile attempts by SSPX leaders to play victim or to “appeal” the pope’s decision will likely fade away in the weeks to come, and presumably those who remain with the society will continue to manage their affairs outside the Catholic Church and the attention of the general public.
But it’s important to note that the SSPX is in many ways just a sideshow.
Massimo Faggioli makes this point in his recent Commonweal article. The SSPX claims around 600,000 adherents in a Church of 1.4 billion Catholics — under 0.05 percent. The Society has been separated from the mainstream Catholic Church for decades, maintaining a parallel ecclesiastical structure and discouraging its members from having anything to do with the institutional Church. The recent Vatican decree only makes official a situation that has existed for a long time. There is a larger problem that will remain long after the SSPX disappears from the headlines: what Faggioli calls “the normalization of liturgical traditionalism within Catholicism,” together with the ecclesiology that has so often accompanied it. Faggioli sees this clearly enough: he observes that Rome now treats the SSPX as an external matter, and that the open question is how Leo will handle the radicalism that remains inside the Church. That is the question I want to press.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to describe this phenomenon, as Faggioli does, as a “posthumous victory for Benedict XVI.” Benedict did not foresee the monster that would grow out of Summorum Pontificum. Nor would I call it “liturgical” traditionalism. Because even though the Tridentine Mass is integral to the traditionalist movement, the liturgy is far from the most problematic element of its ideology.
That said, the older liturgy serves as the organizing principle for a movement that has increasingly treated Vatican II and the postconciliar Magisterium as optional. Not every Catholic who prefers the pre-Vatican II Mass is a crypto-Lefebvrist or a schismatic. But it is hard to deny that dangerous ideological currents are pervasive in traditionalist communities — even those that are “canonically regular.” To their credit, Catholics in regular traditionalist communities have not established a separate hierarchy or consecrated bishops against the explicit command of the pope, but the ideological parallels between the SSPX and these communities are many, and significant theological distinctions are often very hard to locate. In fairness, it should also be noted that this distorted approach to the Magisterium extends far beyond the Latin Mass crowd.
The Lefebvrist logic inside the Church
The SSPX argues that the Council’s teachings on religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism contradict an immutable prior Magisterium. Therefore, according to the Society, the pope and the bishops cannot demand assent to these teachings. Compare that argument with the reasoning used by many “canonically regular” Catholics against Pope Francis. Cardinal Burke claimed that Amoris Laetitia was not magisterial and later dismissed the Church’s revised teaching on capital punishment as “an opinion of Pope Francis as a man.” Edward Feser has insisted that Francis’s teaching on the death penalty cannot be reconciled with earlier teaching — that one must effectively choose between Francis and his predecessors.
The structure of Burke’s and Feser’s arguments against the Church’s teaching on the death penalty is the same as Lefebvre’s against religious liberty. They construct their own idea of “tradition,” find that a magisterial teaching contradicts it, and then conclude that the teaching lacks authority. The living Magisterium is only permitted to confirm what they already believe, but they leave no room for the Magisterium to teach or correct them. Effectively, they become the pope’s judge — apparently believing that his teachings can be graded, corrected, or rejected.
That is not the Catholic understanding of the Magisterium. Vatican II teaches that Catholics owe religious submission of mind and will to the authentic teaching of the Roman pontiff even when he is not speaking ex cathedra — according to his manifest mind and will. This principle does not mean theological questions cannot be asked — but it does call for intellectual honesty and epistemic humility. Both Burke and Feser dissent from the Church’s doctrine on the death penalty, just as SSPX Superior General Davide Pagliarani dissents from Catholic teaching on religious liberty. Neither doctrine has been proposed infallibly, but that does not mean they are not owed religious assent. The fact that so many Catholics think they can use their own private judgment to veto any teaching they find difficult is deeply problematic.
The alternate magisterium
This is the problem we founded Where Peter Is to address. As I wrote in 2022, our original concern was not primarily the Latin Mass or the SSPX. It was the transformation of mainstream conservative Catholicism following the release of Amoris Laetitia. The dubia, the attacks on Francis’s teaching on the death penalty, the resistance to Fiducia Supplicans, and the constant denunciations of synodality gradually created an alternate magisterium and effectively rendered the primacy of the successor of Peter as worthless. Catholics who had once defined orthodoxy as fidelity to John Paul II and Benedict XVI learned to treat open resistance to Francis as normal.
Now some of the same people are appalled that the SSPX followed this logic to its obvious conclusion. Their condemnation of the consecrations is correct. What is missing is any recognition of their own role in creating a Catholic culture in which submission to the pope is conditional and accusations of papal heresy are treated as ordinary theological discourse. I have seen very little self-reflection — and even less repentance — for that.
Faggioli concludes his article by wondering what would happen if every Catholic — from bishops to laypeople — were asked to sign the formula now required of SSPX members seeking reconciliation: obedience to the pope and the hierarchy, together with acceptance of Vatican II. I wonder how many of those currently denouncing the SSPX would be willing to affirm the same principle when applied to the authentic Magisterium of Pope Francis or Pope Leo?
The SSPX is now an external problem, a non-Catholic sect. Individuals who have adhered to the schism have been offered a path to reconciliation. The appeals and protestations from the Lefebvrite leadership are not going to result in a reversal, and may not even receive a response. The more difficult task is addressing the Lefebvrist mentality that remains inside the Church — especially among influencers, academics, priests, bishops, and cardinals within the Church who taught millions of Catholics to distrust and resist the pope. The Church has now drawn a clear line around the Lefebvrans. The harder question is whether it is prepared to confront the same logic when it appears inside its own walls.
Image: “ICKSP Ordinations 3” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Phil Roussin PBR Photos
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. In addition to his work for the site, his writing has appeared in America Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, US Catholic, The Irish Catholic, Catholic Outlook, The Synodal Times, and other Catholic publications. He has been quoted in The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New York Post, and other mainstream outlets on Catholic affairs. He previously co-hosted the Field Hospital podcast with Jeannie Gaffigan and The Debrief podcast. Before founding Where Peter Is, he worked in communications at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Climate Covenant. He is married with four children.
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