Society of Saint Pius X

The SSPX's principal seminary in Ecône (Switzerland).

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is an international Traditionalist Catholic organisation, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The Society's official Latin name is Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X, meaning "Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X". It is composed of 486 priests, together with "religious members who are brothers, sisters, and oblates, and by affiliation, Third Order members".

Relations between the Society and the Holy See have been tense, after Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal permission, and the society's leadership continued its criticism of Vatican II. Dialogue between the two sides has been ongoing for years. On 21 January 2009 the Holy See remitted the excommunication that it had declared in respect of the four SSPX bishops whom Archbishop Lefebvre had illicitly consecrated in 1988, and expressed the hope that all members of the Society would follow this up by speedily returning to full communion with the Church.

Foundation and early history

Like the Traditionalist Catholic movement in general, the SSPX was born out of opposition to changes in Roman Catholicism that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The founder and central figure of the society was the French prelate Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebvre had spent much of his career as a missionary in Africa, and served as superior general of the Holy Ghost Fathers from 1962 to 1968. He retired in 1968 when his congregation began to revise its constitutions in a manner that Lefebvre considered to be un-Catholic and Modernist. Shortly after his retirement, Lefebvre was approached by French seminarians in Rome. It is thought that they told him that they were being persecuted for their adherence to traditional doctrines, and sought his advice on a conservative seminary where they could complete their studies. He directed them to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

In 1970, urged by the Abbot of Abbey of Hauterive and the Dominican theologian Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe to teach the seminarians personally, Lefebvre approached François Charrière, Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, with a request to set up a religious society. Charrière granted Lefebvre's request, and, with a document predated by six days to 1 November 1970, he established the Society of St. Pius X as a "pia unio" on a provisional (ad experimentum) basis for 6 years. Pia unio status was the first stage through which a Catholic organisation passed prior to gaining official recognition as a religious institute or society of apostolic life. (Since 1983, the term "association of the faithful" has replaced "pia unio".) Some Swiss laymen offered the seminary at Ecône to the newly formed group, and in 1971 the first 24 candidates entered, followed by a further 32 in October 1972.

Normally, after a suitable period of experience and consultation with the Holy See, a bishop would raise a pia unio to official status at diocesan level. Lefebvre attempted to bypass this stage, and contacted three different Vatican departments in order to secure early recognition for his society. He succeeded in obtaining a letter of encouragement from Cardinal John Joseph Wright, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, but there was no approval from the Vatican congregation responsible for raising an association to the level desired by Lefebvre. Wright's letter, dated 18 February 1971, was worded carefully, speaking of the association "as Your Excellency presents it", and saying, with regard to the field of competence of Cardinal Wright's own Congregation, that the association "will be able to contribute much to accomplishing the plan drawn up by this Congregation for worldwide sharing of clergy". It has been claimed that Wright was still recommending prospective seminarians to apply to Ecône as late as 1973.

The establishment of the SSPX was unwelcome to a number of churchmen, most notably to the French bishops, whose theological outlook was quite different from that of Lefebvre and who had important connections with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot. Much of the tension between Lefebvre and his critics must be seen in the context of long-term theological, cultural and political divisions between opposing elements of French society. According to Michael Davies, a defender of Lefebvre, at the meeting of the French episcopal conference at Lourdes in 1972, the seminary at Ecône acquired the nickname "le séminaire sauvage" — the "wildcat seminary" — and by November 1974 the French episcopate had indicated that they would not incardinate any of Lefebvre's priests in their dioceses. They also publicly criticised Catholics who remained attached to the Tridentine Mass. By this time, the SSPX had opened additional seminaries in Armada, Michigan, (1973) and in Rome (1974).

The first sign of intervention by curial authorities was a meeting held in the Vatican on 26 March 1974. By June 1974, a commission of cardinals had been formed to enquire into the SSPX. The cardinals decided that a canonical visitation of the seminary should be undertaken, and, from 11–13 November 1974, two Belgian priests carried out a visitation. Their report was said to have been favourable. However, while at Ecône, they expressed a number of theological opinions which were judged to be excessively liberal, and which greatly shocked the seminarians and staff. In what he later described as a mood of "doubtlessly excessive indignation", Lefebvre wrote a "Declaration" in which he strongly attacked what he considered to be liberal trends apparent in the contemporary Church, which (he said) were "clearly evident" in the Council and in the reforms that had followed. This document was leaked and published in January 1975, in the French Traditionalist Catholic journal Itinéraires. It would provide important ammunition to his opponents.

By now, Lefebvre was in serious difficulties. In January 1975, Mgr. Pierre Mamie, the Bishop of Fribourg, wrote to Rome stating his intention to withdraw the pia unio status that his predecessor had granted. In the same month, Lefebvre was asked by the cardinals to come to the Vatican. He met with them twice, on 13 February and 3 March; to Lefebvre's declared surprise, the meetings were hostile in tone: at one point, the French prelate Cardinal Gabriel-Marie Garrone reportedly called him a "fool".

On 6 May 1975, with the approval of the cardinals, Bishop Mamie withdrew the SSPX's pia unio status. Lefebvre instructed his lawyer to lodge appeals, and he ultimately petitioned the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of the Catholic Church, which turned down the complaint. From this point onwards, the SSPX was no longer recognised as an organisation within the Catholic Church.

Lefebvre and the leadership of the Society have always maintained that he was treated unfairly by the Roman Curia, that the suppression of the SSPX was unjust, and that the procedures followed in its suppression violated the provisions of the Code of Canon Law.

The SSPX continued to operate in spite of its dissolution. In the consistory of 24 May 1976, Pope Paul VI rebuked Archbishop Lefebvre by name – reportedly the first time in 200 years that a pope had publicly reprimanded a Catholic bishop – and appealed to him and his followers to change their minds. Archbishop (later Cardinal) Giovanni Benelli, the deputy Vatican Secretary of State, sent Lefebvre two letters ordering him not to proceed with scheduled priestly ordinations for the SSPX. Lefebvre ignored the warning, and went ahead with the ordinations on 29 June 1976; he was immediately suspended "a collatione ordinum" meaning that he was no longer permitted to conduct ordinations. A week later, Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops sent him an official communication requiring him to ask the Pope's pardon. Lefebvre responded with a letter claiming that there was "a secret agreement between high dignitaries in the Church and those in Masonic lodges before the Council". On 22 July, Baggio notified Lefebvre that, since he had not apologised, he was suspended "a divinis". He was now legally forbidden to celebrate any sacraments whatsoever.

The 1988 consecrations

Main article: Ecône Consecrations

See in particular Controversy over the consecration.

A central controversy surrounding the SSPX concerns the consecration by Archbishop Lefebvre (and the Brazilian Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer) of four SSPX priests as bishops in 1988, in violation of the orders of Pope John Paul II.

By 1987, Archbishop Lefebvre was 81. In Catholic doctrine, only a bishop can ordain men to the priesthood. At that point, if Lefebvre died, the SSPX would have become dependent upon non-SSPX bishops to ordain future priests - and Lefebvre did not regard them as properly reliable and orthodox. In June 1987, Lefebvre announced his intention to consecrate a successor to the episcopacy. He implied that he intended to do this with or without the approval of the Holy See. Under canons 1013 and 1382 of the Catholic Code of Canon Law, the consecration of a bishop requires papal approval. Consecration of bishops without papal approval had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis, who described the sacramental activity of bishops who had been consecrated without such approval as "gravely illicit, that is, criminal and sacrilegious". The Roman authorities were unhappy with Lefebvre's plan, but they began discussions with him and the SSPX which led to the signing on 5 May 1988, of a skeleton agreement between Lefebvre and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the future Pope Benedict XVI.

This "protocol" is divided into in two parts. In the first part, which is of doctrinal character, Archbishop Lefebvre, in his own name and on behalf of the SSPX:

• promised fidelity to the Catholic Church and to the Pope
• accepted the doctrine contained in section 25 of the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium on the Church’s magisterium
• pledged a completely non-polemical attitude of study and communication with the Holy See on the allegedly problematic aspects of the Second Vatican Council and the reforms that had followed it
• recognised the validity of the revised rites of Mass and of the other sacraments
• promised to respect the common discipline of the Church and her laws, making allowance for special provisions granted to the SSPX.

The second (legal) part of the document envisaged, apart from the canonical reconciliation of the persons concerned, that:

• the SSPX would become a Society of Apostolic Life with special exemption regarding public worship, care of souls and apostolic activity, in line with canons 679-683
• the SSPX would be granted the faculty to celebrate the Tridentine rites
• a special commission, including two members of the SSPX, would be set up to facilitate contacts and resolve problems and conflicts
• it would be proposed to the Pope that a member of the SSPX be consecrated as a bishop.

This document was to be submitted to the Pope for his approval. However, Lefebvre quickly developed misgivings. The very next day, he declared he was obliged in conscience to proceed, with or without papal approval, to consecrate a bishop to succeed him.

A further meeting took place in Rome on 24 May. It is said that Lefebvre was promised that the Pope would appoint a bishop from among the members of the SSPX, chosen according to the normal procedures, and that episcopal ordination would take place on 15 August. In return, Lefebvre would have to request reconciliation with the Church on the basis of the protocol of 5 May. Lefebvre, for his part, presented three written requests:

• the episcopal ordination must take place on 30 June
• not one, but three bishops, must be consecrated (a requirement that he had already mentioned)
• the majority of the members of the special commission must be from the SSPX

On Pope John Paul II's instructions, Cardinal Ratzinger replied to Lefebvre on 30 May, insisting on observance of the agreement of 5 May, and adding that, if Lefebvre carried out unauthorised consecrations on 30 June, the promised authorisation for the ordination to the episcopacy would not be granted.

On 3 June, Lefebvre wrote from Ecône, stating that he intended to proceed. On 9 June, the Pope replied with a personal letter, appealing to him not to proceed with a design that "would be seen as nothing other than a schismatic act, the theological and canonical consequences of which are known to you". Lefebvre did not reply, and the letter was made public on 16 June. For the first time, the Holy See stated publicly that Lefebvre was in danger of being excommunicated.

On 30 June 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre proceeded to ordain to the episcopate four priests of the SSPX: Mgr. Antônio de Castro Mayer, the retired Bishop of Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil, assisted in the ceremony.

The following day, the Congregation for Bishops issued a decree declaring that Archbishop Lefebvre had incurred automatic excommunication. On the following day, 2 July, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter known as Ecclesia Dei in which he condemned the Archbishop's action. The Pope stated that, since schism is defined in the Code of Canon Law as "withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him" (canon 751), the consecration "constitute[d] a schismatic act", and that, by virtue of canon 1382 of the Code, it entailed automatic excommunication for all the bishops involved.

Lefebvre argued that his actions had been necessary because the traditional form of the Catholic faith and sacraments would become extinct without traditionalist clergy to pass them on to the next generation. He called the ordinations "opération survie" - "Operation Survival", citing in his defense canons 1323 and 1324 of the Code of Canon Law. Canon 1323 provides that a canonical penalty is not binding when a person has acted "by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience, unless the act is intrinsically evil or tends to the harm of souls". Canon 1324 states that, if the act is intrinsically evil or tends to the harm of souls, the penalty must be diminished or replaced by a penance if the offense was committed by a person who was coerced by grave fear, even if only relative, or by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience. It also states that the penalty is to be reduced or replaced if the perpetrator erroneously, but culpably, thought that necessity or grave inconvenience existed (this would exclude, therefore, acts intrinsically evil or tending to the harm of souls). In all these circumstances, canon 1324 concludes, automatic penalties do not apply.

Non-SSPX canonists counter this argument by quoting canon 1325 ("Ignorance which is crass or supine or affected can never be taken into account when applying the provisions of canons 1323 and 1224") and stating that, in view of the clear formal canonical warnings given to Lefebvre, he could not claim to be ignorant nor to benefit from what the previous canons stated about action taken in error.

Some members of the SSPX disassociated themselves from the Society as a result of Lefebvre's actions and, with the approval of the Holy See, formed a separate society called the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Canonical situation of the SSPX

The Holy See's view

Following the 1988 episcopal consecrations, the Holy See declared that the six bishops who had been involved in the consecration ceremony had incurred automatic excommunication under the Code of Canon Law, and that their action constituted a schismatic act. With regard to others, it said that "formal adherence to the schism is a grave offence against God and carries the penalty of excommunication".

At the same time, the Pope set up the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei to help SSPX members and adherents who wished "to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church while preserving their spiritual and liturgical traditions" to enter "full ecclesial communion". This Commission has issued many formal written clarifications about the canonical situation of people involved with the Society of St. Pius X.

On 24 August 1996, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts responded to an enquiry from the Bishop of Sion (Switzerland), which had been referred to the Council by the Congregation for Bishops, by expressing its judgment that "in the case of the Lefebvrian deacons and priests there seems no doubt that their ministerial activity in the ambit of the schismatic movement is a more than evident sign of the fact that the two requirements" (internal and external) for formal adherence to the schism "have been met". It added: "On the other hand, in the case of the rest of the faithful it is obvious that an occasional participation in liturgical acts or the activity of the Lefebvrian movement, done without making one's own the attitude of doctrinal and disciplinary disunion of such a movement, does not suffice for one to be able to speak of formal adherence to the movement." It stated that its judgment was about the existence of the sin of schism, since for the existence of the canonical crime of schism, which entails excommunication, the conditions listed in canons 1323-1324 of the Code of Canon Law must also be met. While its reply concerned only one diocese, the Pontifical Council said that, if there were serious general pastoral confusion about the situation of the members of the Society of St. Pius X, the Holy See could consider issuing a general decree on the matter. The Holy See has not yet done so.

In 1999, the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei stated that it was likely, but not certain, that the SSPX priests were adhering to the schism, which would mean that they were excommunicated, but that people who, "because of their attraction to the traditional Latin Mass and not because they refuse submission to the Roman Pontiff or reject communion with the members of the Church subject to him", attended Mass celebrated by those priests, were not excommunicated, although, the longer they frequented SSPX chapels, the greater the likelihood of imbibing a schismatic mentality that would seem to involve adherence to the schism and so excommunication. It judged that documentation sent to it in 1998 clearly indicated the extent to which "many in authority in the Society of St. Pius X" were in conformity with the formal definition of schism. In 1995, it declared it "morally illicit for the faithful to participate in these (the SSPX) Masses unless they are physically or morally impeded from participating in a Mass celebrated by a Catholic priest in good standing", and added that "the fact of not being able to assist at the celebration of the so-called 'Tridentine' Mass is not considered a sufficient motive for attending such Masses." The Commission recognized the validity of the ordination of the SSPX priests, but added that they were prohibited from exercising their priestly functions because of not being properly incardinated in a diocese or religious institute in full communion with the Holy See. It also said that the Masses they celebrated were valid but illicit, but the lack of proper faculties on the part of the SSPX priests meant that celebrations of Penance and Matrimony under their auspices were invalid. The Pontifical Commission reaffirmed various of these statements in 2003.

Apart from these formal statements, the Commission's President, Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, who has long favored better relations between the society and the Holy See, commented in press and television interviews about the situation of the members of the Society. In one such interview, he said that the 1988 consecrations gave rise to a situation of separation, even if not a formal schism. While the members of the Society were not, in the full strict sense, in schism, they lacked full communion, and the consecrations indicated a schismatic attitude. While, in consecrating the bishops, Lefebvre committed a schismatic act, the members and adherents of the Society could not be called schismatics, but they were in great danger of falling into schism; the Society's bishops were suspended and excommunicated, but other members and adherents were not excommunicated.

In his letter of 10 March 2009 concerning his remission of the excommunication of the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed: "Until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers - even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty - do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church."

The Holy See and sanctions imposed at diocesan level

On 1 May 1991 Bishop Joseph Ferrario of Honolulu declared six followers of the Society excommunicated on grounds of schism for having procured the services of SSPX Bishop, and notorious holocaust denier, Richard Williamson to administer confirmation. They appealed to Rome and the Holy See declared the decree invalid because their action, though blameworthy, did not constitute schism.

On 19 March 1996, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz imposed excommunication on all Catholics in and of his Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska who after 15 May 1996 remained or became members of any of 12 named associations. The list included the Society of St. Pius X, as well as, for instance, Freemasonry and Planned Parenthood. One of the associations, Call to Action, appealed against the bishop's decree, but the Holy See rejected the appeal.

The Society's view

The SSPX considers itself faithful to the Catholic Church and to the Popes, up to and including Benedict XVI. The SSPX bishops do not claim "ordinary" jurisdiction over the Society's adherents, which would make the latter subject to them, not to the local diocesan bishops, and would amount to an obvious challenge to the Holy See's authority act of schism. Instead they claim to possess an "extraordinary" jurisdiction. This is of specific importance in Catholic canon law in relation to the sacraments of confession and marriage.

To absolve sins validly, a priest must be given the faculty to do so, a faculty that, normally, only the local bishop can give. Similarly, in normal circumstances a marriage can be contracted validly only in the presence of the local bishop or the parish priest or of a priest or deacon delegated by one of these. To overcome this difficulty, the Society claims that absolution and marriage under its auspices are valid, on the grounds of its interpretation of canon 144 §1 and canon 844 §2 of the Code of Canon Law. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei has stated that, in accordance with canon 144 someone who confesses to an SSPX priest while genuinely not knowing that the priest does not have the required faculty will be validly absolved, but that, with this exception, the sacraments of Penance and Matrimony in which SSPX priests are involved are invalid.

The Society also claims to have authority to dispense from marriage impediments and to grant marriage annulments. This has led some priests to leave the Society on the grounds that such actions usurp the ordinary jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops and are therefore schismatic acts.

The Holy See lifts excommunication of bishops

By the power expressly conferred on him by Pope Benedict XVI, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops issued a decree on 21 January 2009 remitting, at their request, the excommunication of Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta. L'Osservatore Romano of 25 January 2009, spoke of "the excommunication that they (the four bishops) had incurred twenty years ago", said that they "had incurred latae sententiae excommunication" and declared that, by means of the decree, the Pope "remits the excommunication that lay upon the Prelates in question".

By the January 2009 decree, the 1 July 1988 decree declaring the excommunication became "devoid of juridical effect". The other limitations, such as the suspension a divinis of the SSPX clergy, including the four bishops, remain in force. This decisions has provoked major outrage in Europe .

The SSPX today

According to its own figures, the Society had as of 10 March 2009 491 priests present in 31 countries and active in 32 more, 725 Mass centers, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters, 215 seminarians in six seminaries, 88 schools, and 2 university-level institutes. The SSPX's main seminary is in Ecône, Switzerland; others are located in the United States (Winona, Minnesota), France (Flavigny-sur-Ozerain), Germany (Zaitzkofen), Australia (Goulburn), and Argentina (La Reja). The largest proportion of the SSPX's priests (over 120) are stationed in France.

In the past, the SSPX received support from the following diocesan bishops:

• Antônio de Castro Mayer, Bishop of Campos, Brazil (now deceased)
• Salvador Lazo Lazo, Bishop of San Fernando de la Union, Philippines (now deceased)
• John Bosco Manat Chuabsamai, Bishop of Ratchaburi, Thailand (born (1935-10-31) October 31, 1935, resigned in 2003)

It was closely associated with the Priestly Union of St Jean-Marie Vianney, founded by Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer, until this group reconciled with the Holy See in 2001.

The Society now has close links with the Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat, led by Father Basil Kovpak, a schismatic priest formerly of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who was definitively excommunicated from the Catholic Church in November 2007 after having Bishop Richard Williamson of the SSPX illicitly ordain two priests and seven deacons for his society in violation of canons 1015 §1 and 1017 of the Code of Canon Law.

Archbishop Lefebvre, who as superior general had been unable to impose his will on the representatives of the Holy Ghost Fathers at their September 1968 general chapter, gave the Society a statute that excludes elected representatives from SSPX general chapters, in which the only participants are office-holders (appointed personally by the superior general) together with (in a more limited number) the most senior members. There are similar restrictions within the Districts into which the Society is divided.

Negotiations with the Holy See

For a number of years after the 1988 consecrations, there was little if any dialogue between the SSPX and the Holy See. This state of affairs ended when the Society led a large pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee in the year 2000. A sympathetic, Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei approached the SSPX bishops during the pilgrimage and told them that the Pope was prepared to grant them either, according to different accounts, a personal prelature (the status enjoyed by Opus Dei) or an apostolic administration (the status given to the traditionalist priests of Campos, Brazil). The SSPX leadership responded with distrust, saying that Castrillón was vague on how the new structure would be implemented and sustained, and criticising the Holy See's allegedly heavy-handed treatment of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. They requested two preliminary "signs" before continuing negotiations: that the Holy See grant permission for all priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass; and that its statement that the 1988 consecrations had resulted in excommunication for the clerics involved be declared void.

Cardinal Castrillón refused to grant interviews on the subject, in order "to maintain the privacy of the details of our dialogue", though this silence was broken when his letter of 5 April 2002 to Bishop Bernard Fellay was later published. This contained the text of a protocol summarizing the meeting between the two men held on 29 December 2000. This envisaged a reconciliation on the basis of the Lefebvre-Ratzinger protocol of 5 May 1988; the 1988 excommunications would be lifted rather than declared null. From 2003 onwards, the annual reports of the Ecclesia Dei Commission began to report on dialogue between the Vatican authorities and the SSPX, beginning with "some high-level meetings and... an exchange of correspondence" in 2003, continuing with "dialogue at various levels... [and] meetings, some at a high level" in 2004, and leading to "somewhat improved" dialogue with "more concrete proposals" in 2005.

The year 2005 was of great significance because it saw the accession to the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who had participated in the 1988 negotiations and who was seen as being sympathetic to the use of the Tridentine liturgy. In August 2005, Benedict met with Bishop Fellay for 35 minutes, at the latter's request. There was no breakthrough, but statements from both sides spoke of the atmosphere as positive. It was reported that the SSPX question was among the topics for discussion at meetings of the Pope with cardinals and Curia officials in early 2006. In July 2007, the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum, which liberalised the restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. In an accompanying letter, he wrote that he wished to see "an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church" and "to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew" - presumably a reference to the SSPX and other traditionalists in dispute with Rome. Bishop Fellay, while welcoming the Pope's decision, referred to "the difficulties that still remain", and stated that the SSPX wished that the new "favourable climate" would "make it possible - after the decree of excommunication which still affects its bishops has been withdrawn – to consider more serenely the disputed doctrinal issues."

The 2007 Ecclesia Dei report states that "the Pontifical Commission has taken advice from many experts to continue studying concrete juridical ways for the Lefebvrians' reconciliation. The projects drafted to this end have been submitted to the Supreme Authority".

On April 2008, Bishop Fellay issued Letter to Friends and Benefactors n.° 72[7], informing SSPX faithfuls that, in spite of both Summorum Pontificum and the recent Vatican documents on the true meaning of Lumen Gentium [8] and evangelisation[9], it was not possible yet to sign an agreement with the Holy See, since it still wasn't going to deal with doctrinal errors. Two months later, however, after a meeting held in Rome between the two, Cardinal Castrillòn Hoyos indicated five "conditions" SSPX must comply with to achieve full communion. On several occasions, but especially in the homily he preached at Lourdes for the SSPX Pilgrimage, on 26 October 2008, Bishop Fellay replied that Vatican requests were ambiguous; he has also launched a new Rosary Crusade, the first one having been undertaken to ask the liberalization of Tridentine Mass: this time - from November 1 up to Christmas 2008 - SSPX faithfuls were to pray for the 1988 excommunications to be declared void. As reported by Fellay himself on DICI.org, in the Crusade were prayed over one million and seven hundred Rosaries.

By a decree of 21 January 2009 (Protocol Number 126/2009), which was issued in response to a renewed request dated 15 December 2008 that Bishop Fellay made on behalf of all four bishops whom Lefebvre had consecrated on 30 June 1988, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, by the power expressly granted to him by Pope Benedict XVI, remitted the automatic excommunication that they had thereby incurred, and expressed the wish that this would be followed speedily by full communion of the whole of the Society of Saint Pius X with the Church, thus bearing witness, by the proof of visible unity, to true loyalty and true recognition of the Pope's Magisterium and authority.

A Note of the Secretariat of State issued on 4 February 2009 specified that, while the lifting of the excommunication freed the four bishops from a very grave canonical penalty, it made no change in the juridical situation of the Society of St. Pius X, which continued to lack canonical recognition in the Catholic Church, and that the four bishops remained without any canonical function in the Church and were not exercising legitimately any ministry within it. The note added that future recognition of the Society required full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and of the teaching of Popes John XIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and repeated the assurance given in the decree of 21 January 2009 that the Holy See would study, along with those involved, the questions not yet settled, so as to reach a full satisfactory solution of the problems that had given rise to the split.

Statements by SSPX clerics about the Church authorities

One of the Society's four bishops, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, has stated that Pope Benedict XVI "has professed heresies in the past! He...has never retracted his errors. When he was a theologian, he professed heresies, he published a book full of heresies." In the same interview, Bishop Mallerais said of the Second Vatican Council: "You cannot read Vatican II as a Catholic work. It is based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. ...I will say, one day the Church should erase this Council. She will not speak of it anymore. She must forget it. The Church will be wise if she forgets this council."

Similarly, Bishop Richard Williamson has said of Pope Benedict XVI: "His past writings are full of Modernist errors. Now, Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies (Pascendi, Saint Pius X). So Ratzinger as a heretic goes far beyond Luther's Protestant errors, as Bishop Tissier de Mallerais well said." Williamson added that the documents of the Second Vatican Council "are much too subtly and deeply poisoned to be reinterpreted. The whole of a partly poisoned cake goes to the trash can!"

Controversies and criticism

Political controversies

There is an overlap in French society between the SSPX's constituency of support and support for reactionary political positions. In the French context, such positions include:

• Condemnation of the 1789 French Revolution and of the French Republic, accompanied by support for the pre-Revolution absolutist Catholic monarchy. Archbishop Lefebvre vocally condemned the Revolution. The French priest Fr. Paul Aulagnier, who has since left the SSPX and been reconciled with the Church hierarchy, was quoted in an SSPX periodical in 2001 as saying, while serving in Belgium (a constitutional monarchy): "I am pleased to be in Brussels - I who detest the republic and hate democracy."
• Support for the Vichy government (1940-1944). Lefebvre spoke approvingly of the "Catholic order of Pétain", referring to the Vichy head of state Philippe Pétain, who was later sentenced to death as a traitor. The Society's official journal in Belgium has denounced the anti-Vichy measures conducted after World War II by the mainstream French conservatives of Charles De Gaulle. There have also been allegations that the SSPX had links with the Vichy functionary Paul Touvier and that Vichy songs were learned at a scout camp of the Society (see below).
• Support for the Front National political party and its leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, who is on the far right of the political spectrum. In 1985, Lefebvre was quoted in the French far-right periodical Présent as endorsing Le Pen, though his endorsement was made on the basis that Le Pen was the only major French politician who unambiguously condemned abortion. In 1991, the then SSPX priest Fr. Philippe Laguérie called the Front National "the party least removed from the natural law".

In the United States, the Society has been accused of spreading allegedly fascist, un-American political ideas, and undermining American patriotism.

Occupation of the church of St Nicolas du Chardonnet

In 1977, a group of SSPX priests and laypeople led by Monsignor François Ducaud-Bourget entered the parish church of St Nicolas du Chardonnet in central Paris and celebrated Mass. They subsequently refused to leave, and the church remains in the possession of the SSPX to this day.

The various French municipal authorities have had ownership of the older churches in France since the enactment of the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State, though the buildings are permitted to be used by the appropriate religious denominations. Ducaud-Bourget maintained that the Traditionalist Catholics represented by the SSPX were the true heirs of the Catholics of 1905. Although the occupation was declared illegal by the French courts, the authorities reached the conclusion that, by comparison with forcibly evicting the SSPX, the continuing occupation would be the lesser of the two evils.

An SSPX attempt in 1993 to occupy another church in Paris, that of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was unsuccessful.

Alleged anti-Semitism

There have been statements by some members of the society which have been widely interpreted as anti-Semitic, particularly regarding Holocaust denial. The society itself denies the claim that anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism is rampant in important circles of the Society The Society stated that it has lay supporters and even a priest with a Jewish background, a reference to Father Florian Abrahamowicz, whose views on the Jews have been interpreted as negative, and who was expelled by the Italian chapter of the Society in February 2009 for engaging in holocaust denial..

Bishop Williamson

The views of Bishop Williamson have been a particular source of controversy, as have those of another British SSPX cleric, the late Fr. Michael Crowdy. For example, Bishop Williamson has written:

"However, until they re-discover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem. So we may fear their continuing to play their major part in the agitation of the East and in the corruption of the West. Here the wise Catholic will remember that, again, the ex-Christian nations have only their own Liberalism to blame for allowing free circulation within Christendom to the enemies of Christ."

In an interview with Swedish Television in November 2008, whose broadcast on 21 January 2009, the date on which the Holy See lifted the excommunication of the four SSPX bishops, gained wide publicity, Williamson repeated his opinion that the generally accepted history of the Holocaust is wrong. He accepted an estimate of only 200,000-300,000 Jews who perished in Nazi concentration camps, and denied that any were killed in gas chambers.. The Vatican has repudiated Williamson's views as "unacceptable"

Williamson's views on this and other subjects are controversial even within traditionalist Catholicism: see the main article on him for details. After his interview, broadcast by Swedish Television on 21 January 2009, both the Superior General of the SSPX, Bishop Fellay, and the District Superior of the SSPX in Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger, stated that Williamson's views represented his own personal opinions; and Bishop Fellay, as superior general of the Society, "prohibited him, pending any new orders, from taking any public positions on political or historical questions".

Although the SSPX authorities have thus distinguished Williamson's views from those of the Society, the Anti-Defamation League has accused the Society of St. Pius X of being "mired in anti-Semitism", and journalist John L. Allen, Jr. has said it would be misleading to consider Williamson an isolated case: Father Florian Abrahamowicz, who after being the superior in Italy has since been expelled from the Society, also said he was not sure the Nazis had used gas chambers for anything other than disinfection, seemed to cast doubt on the number of six million Jews killed, complained that the Jews had exalted the Holocaust above other genocides (Armenian Genocide etc.), and called the Jews first "the people of God" and then the "people of deicide", to be converted to Jesus Christ at the end times.

The SSPX was also accused of anti-Semitism in a 2006 report on Traditionalist Catholicism published by the American Southern Poverty Law Center. Defenders of the SSPX have strongly criticised the report and accused the SPLC of using accusations of anti-Semitism as a means of "silencing opponents of liberalism." They have drawn parallels to similar accusations against Jewish scholars like Norman Finkelstein.

In 1989, Paul Touvier, a former Vichy French official and a fugitive wanted for war crimes, was arrested in the SSPX priory in Nice. The SSPX stated at the time that Touvier had been granted asylum there as "an act of charity to a homeless man". In 1994, Touvier was sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the execution of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape in 1944, in reprisal for the French Resistance's killing of the Vichy minister Philippe Henriot. On his death in 1996, a Requiem Mass for the benefit of Touvier's soul was offered for him by Father Philippe Laguérie, the priest then in charge of the SSPX church of St Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris.

The Scouts de France

A number of groups whose following overlaps with that of the SSPX, such as the Scouts d'Europe, have been accused of extremist leanings. In 1998, the Scouts de France faced international scrutiny following an accident at Perros-Guirec that claimed the lives of four marine Scouts and of a sailor who died in an attempt to save them. A media frenzy followed, and it was alleged that Fr. Cottard, the SSPX priest responsible for the children, had subjected them to a harsh disciplinary regimen, forcing them to spend the night before their deaths sleeping on a pebbled beach. Fr. Cottard had also failed to call the emergency services for almost 8 hours, and did not take basic safety precautions such as properly checking the weather forecast.

Other controversies too have been linked to the Scouts:

• A few days earlier, 72 girls had been hospitalised for sunstroke sustained during an outdoor Mass in the Cantal region.
• A week later, a 14-year-old was left alone in a forest, without map or compass, and told to find his own way back to camp some 18km away; this was allegedly a punishment for hitch-hiking during a march.
• A year earlier, the parent of a scout who attended a camp in Brittany alleged that her son returned having learned to sing Vichy songs.

Other controversies

In February 2008, St. Mary's Academy, a school in Kansas affiliated with the SSPX, refused to allow a woman referee to officiate at a high-school basketball game in which St. Mary's was participating, reportedly on the grounds that it was not appropriate for a woman to be in a position of authority over male students. In response, the other referees refused to referee the game. The school issued a statement denying that the refusal was due to the reported reason. It stated instead that "[the] formation of adolescent boys is best accomplished by male role models", and that "[t]eaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we cannot place them in an aggressive athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their concern about running into a female referee".

Notable groups that have split from the SSPX

In chronological order:

• Society of St. Pius V -- In 1983, several U.S. SSPX priests broke with or were forced to leave the Society, principally because of Lefebvre's insistence that they use the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal and accept Pope John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II as legitimate popes (see sedevacantism). The nine priests went on to form the Society of St. Pius V.
• Istituto Mater Boni Consilii -- or the Institute of the Mother of Good Counsel is a traditionalist congregation of priests that follows the Sedeprivationist school of thought. The founders of the institute seceded 1985 from the Society of St. Pius X under the leadership of Fr. Francesco Ricossa, onetime faculty member of the seminary at Econe.
• Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter -- The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter was established in 1988 after the Ecône consecrations. Responding to the Holy See's declaration that these constituted a schismatic act and that those involved were thereby automatically excommunicated, twelve priests left the Society and established the Fraternity, in full communion with the Holy See.
• Institute of the Good Shepherd -- The Institute of the Good Shepherd (Institut du Bon-Pasteur, IBP) was established as a papally recognised society of apostolic life on 8 September 2006 for a group of SSPX members who maintained it was time for the Society to accept reconciliation with Pope Benedict XVI.

See also

• St. Mary's College, Kansas
• The International Seminary of Saint Pius X

SSPX-affiliated orders

The following is a non-comprehensive list of SSPX-affiliated religious orders:

• Benedictines - Bellaigue, France
• Benedictines of the Monastery of the Holy Cross, Brazil
• Benedictines - Silver City, New Mexico, USA
• Capuchins - Morgon, France

• Dominicans - Avrille, France

• Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat, Ukraine

External links

General

• Archbishop Lefebvre's "Open Letter to Confused Catholics"
• Pope John Paul II's motu proprio Ecclesia Dei
• Ecclesia Dei Commission
• Contacts with Rome (some articles are in English)

Official SSPX websites

• SSPX General House
• SSPX in the United States with FAQs and general information
• SSPX in Great Britain
• SSPX in Canada
• SSPX in Scandinavia
• SSPX in Australia
• SSPX in Asia and New Zealand
• SSPX in South America
• Angelus Press
• Angelus Magazine
• DICI — News agency for the SSPX Mother House
• Short History of the SSPX
• International Locations of the Society of St Pius X
• Si Si No No
• Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary
• The Society of Saint Pius X in Poland
• The Society of Saint Pius X in Lithuania
• The Society of Saint Pius X in Belarus
• The Society of Saint Pius X in Ukraine

Sites critical of SSPX

• Peter J. Vere: A Canonical History of the Lefebvrite Schism
• F. John Loughnan's Files On The Society Of St Pius X (SSPX)
• Is the Society of St. Pius X in Schism?
• Is the Society of St. Pius X a Cult? (Appears to be sister site to "Is the Society of St. Pius X in Schism?")
• Anti-Defamation League Report: Society of St. Pius X -- Mired in Anti-Semitism

Video footage

• The Econe Consecrations in 1988
• The Tridentine Mass offered at the Church of Saint Nicholas de Chardonnet in Paris
• The Christmas Sermon of Father Lawrence Novak
• The SSPX-bishop Richard Williamson denying the Holocaust