Vatican News: Pope’s final appeal to Society of Saint Pius X: Do not tear the seamless garment of Christ
The letter sent by Pope Leo XIV to the Superior General of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X is dated 29 June, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, two days before the Lefebvrists’ announced episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate, which would constitute a new schismatic act.
Vatican News – link to article
As he had announced in recent days during his meeting with journalists at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo has made a final appeal to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, urging it not to proceed with the consecration of four new bishops without a pontifical mandate, scheduled to take place in Écône, Switzerland, on the morning of 1 July.
“With a paternal heart, and aware of the responsibility entrusted to me by the Lord as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I address you and, through you, the bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X,” Pope Leo XIV writes. “The Church recognizes the devotion to liturgical life, commitment to priestly formation, apostolic zeal and desire for fidelity to Tradition that characterize many people and communities connected to your Fraternity. This has motivated the attentive and generous attitude that my Predecessors have consistently shown to you.”
“In this spirit, and filled with Christian affection, I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” the Pope continues. “I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.”
“The Church is open to a path of dialogue and understanding that the Holy Spirit can make possible and fruitful,” the Pope writes in the letter, which was composed in French and addressed to the Superior General of the Fraternity, Fr. Davide Pagliarani. “I pray for you, because to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity. May the Lord enlighten your consciences and awaken your hearts. With a sorrowful yet hopeful heart, I feel it is my duty, through the authority received from Christ, to ask you to desist from your intended act. I entrust these intentions to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Good Counsel.”
The Pope is thus once again calling on the Lefebvrists to refrain from carrying out the schismatic act of episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate. Significantly, the central argument advanced in the letter concerns the spiritual welfare of the faithful attached to the Society of Saint Pius X, since such an act would render the sacraments they receive illicit and, in certain cases—namely sacramental confession and marriage—even invalid.
‘Schism, for Christians, is the greatest of crimes and the greatest of tragedies’ said the Huguenot theologian Jurieu. Their proclivity for schismatic behaviour devalues all the virtues Pope Leo lists and makes the SSPX a thorn in the Church’s side.
Joe, my Cordial Greetings from Martigny, near Econe.
The SSPX no longer are a thorn in the side of the Synodal Church. As of the Laying on of hands yesterday they are outside of the Synodal Church. They remain members of the One, Holy, Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
So Many Young Seminarians and Religious here. Archbishop Dermot Farrell presides over an Archdiocese where Priests are an average age of 69.
The Average Age of SSPX Priests is 47. The number of SSPX Clergy has quadrupled since 1988.
The Holy Ghost is telling us something.
I can die content when the day comes. The Mass and Catechism of St Pius V are secure. I am glad to have substantially supported the SSPX financially over many years.
Joe, in the end Salus Animarum Suprema Lex. In the days of St. Pius V, Leo XIII, Pius IX, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XII there was no conflict between loyalty to the Papacy and Loyalty to the Deposit of Faith.
With Study Group 9 trying to legitimize what is condemned in Romans 1:27 and A Montinian Rite which resembles a parish pantomine and not the Sacrifice of Calvary, we must get off the fence.
Te Deum Laudamus…..
Sorry that you are leaving us Dermot. We need people with chutzpah like you.
Someone on Facebook wrote: “Vatican 2 can certainly be undone. Please tell me why can it not?” A moment’s reflection suggested this answer: “Because Vatican II is the fully mature fruit of all that the church has thought and done since Vatican I, especially: 1. the rise of social doctrine and its many practical implications, since Leo XIII, 1891; , 2. the biblical movement; 3. the liturgical movement; 4. the ecumenical movement; 5. the reflection on Judaism in light of the Holocaust; 6. the harvest of missionary experience and of dialogue and coexistence with Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.; 7. the ongoing appreciation of Democracy (first given an unambiguously positive assessment by Pius XII in 1943); 8. the renewal of theology by the ressourcement movement — Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, with special reference to Ecclesiology and Mariology; 9. the lessons of the Modernist Crisis, including reflection on Development of Doctrine in light of Newman’s thought. What the SSPX most hates about Vatican II is its friendliness to Judaism and to Democracy.”
“trying to legitimize what is condemned in Romans 1:27” — a “clobber text”. But St Paul is warning the Jewish apologists who gloat over sexual misbehaviour of the Gentiles that they should look to their own behaviour: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Dermot is echoing Athanasius Schneider, who at least remains a Catholic bishop: https://fsspx.news/en/news/bishop-schneider-homosexual-heresy-59097 . The mild Fr James Martin, SJ, is their bogeyman. But it looks as if the SSPX itself is as bad as or worse than they allege their Catholic counterparts to be. Fr Arnaud Rostand, one of the SSPX leaders, publicly confessed in court to sexually abusing multiple boys over a 15‑year period during SSPX‑related activities across several countries. He was the SSPX District Superior in the United States (2008–2014). The abuse often took place during SSPX‑related activities such as scout camps in France, Spain, and Switzerland.
This conventicle of frivolous prancers strikes a pose of moral and theological superiority to the Catholic Church. Already their excited little sect is plagued by all the problems they denounce in the billion-strong RCC, without the personnel or talents to deal with them competently. Leo gives them a hard task: to assume unambiguously their schismatic status and to discover what hard work it is to keep up a schism — you have to ensure unity and conformity among its members while at the same time maintaining the scissiparous cult of disunity and disobedience in regard to the Catholic Church. The two prescriptions go in opposite directions and the body that most suffers from the fissiparous frenzy is the schismatic group itself. Leo does them a service by letting them stew in their own juice, so that they may learn the folly of their ways and hopefully be restored to sanity. He wants them to know the difference between playing at schism and actually being in schism. It’s fun to brandish toy swords, but not so much fun when the blades are sharp. Is schism a reality and an evil? Is it, as Jurieu said, “the greatest of tragedies and the greatest of crimes”? SSPX are giving us a laboratory sample of schism in action, from which salutary lessons may be drawn. They take themselves to be a new dawn of authentic catholicism, destined to grow and grow. But they have cut off every avenue of true growth, leaving space only for a diseased reactionary formation, a garden of weeds. Their performance is a hilarious pantomime, as they denounce a fake Council, seven fake Popes, a fake Church, brandishing the name of past popes and councils that would be horrified at their behaviour, which spits at the very foundations of Catholic identity since the second century.
Trump’s Mt Rushmore speech reminded me of the retro rhetoric of the Lefebvrites — silly but poisonous. Trump relives the first red scare of the 1910s, in a demented crusade to make America small again. The SSPX are in a similar time-warp, producing a fascinating weird hybrid, a compilation of period pieces whose only connection with the real world is its schismatic posture towards the Catholic Church. It depends for its entire reality on the Church from which it has cut itself off. Unlike some past schisms it has NO spiritual message of any inherent originality or force, and can produce only stale and corrupt imitations of past practices, as rancid as Trump’s replay of outdated anti-Red posturing.
Dermot predicted this would happen, while I imagined the tolerant vagueness of Benedict XVI would continue. Having a canon lawyer in charge makes a difference. As a son of St Augustine he comes armed with the antiDonatist playbook.
Three comments: (1) In the 1980s I was teaching theology at a Catholic university. On a Monday morning, one of my students, age 18, breathlessly told me that he had attended a Latin Mass the previous Sunday. I asked him whether he understood any part of it. He answered ‘no’ because he did not know Latin. (I regretted those days when I had to “speak” Latin in my studies, and I did it fluently). But he said that he loved the incense, the vestments, and the sense of “mystery” (whatever it was) the Latin Mass gave him. I did tell him that I hoped these things would provide him with enough intellectual support when life gets rough. (2) The SSPX’s issues are not only liturgical (rejection of what they call “Montinian” Mass) but doctrinal (the validity of Vatican II’s teachings and its many reforms beyond the liturgy). Rome permits the Latin Mass but requires that all these right-wing groups recognize the validity of the reformed sacramental celebrations, especially the Eucharist, and Vatican II’s teachings, which the SSPX refuses to do. By ordaining four bishops without papal approval, the SSPX incurred automatic excommunication and became schismatic. I most strongly recommend that after the official declaration that the SSPX is schismatic (which is an ecclesiastical and canonical reality), the Pope and the Roman Curia just let them be and go their own way and make no further official declaration on the matter and make no further attempt at “reconciliation.” The door always remains open for them to come in if they wish. They survive by cannibalizing the Vatican’s attention; without it and the media’s free publicity, they will remain a tiny, irrelevant church relic and eventually disappear, like so many similar groups before them. (3) Sadly, this tempest in the ecclesiastical cup took the attention away from the urgent issue of the potential misuse of AI Pope Leo XIV addresses in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. Let’s turn our gaze to it.