New Pope Speed Runs Schism By Excommunicating SSPX — show notes
AP News on July 2nd:
“VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.
By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops.
The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.
During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity. An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome.”
The Excommunication
In Catholic teaching, excommunication does not equal being condemned to hell, nor is it understood as a declaration that a person is damned (Official theology has long insisted that only God judges the soul definitively; excommunication addresses external communion, not the internal state of grace.)
- The current law treats it as a “censure,” not expulsion from the Church; an excommunicated person remains a baptized Catholic, still bound by obligations like Sunday Mass, but barred from receiving or administering sacraments and holding church offices
- Its purpose is medicinal: a severe wake‑up call meant to prompt repentance and return to full communion, not a spiritual “execution.”
- Most excommunications can be lifted by going to confession and receiving absolution from the appropriate authority (sometimes any priest, sometimes a bishop, sometimes the Holy See, depending on the offense).
- Also, what is your take on the Vatican’s excommunication SSPX members? https://www.facebook.com/reel/776390925518377
- https://www.disclose.tv/id/8klgxp4icx/
- The decree promulgated in response was by far the harshest one yet
- Leo hasn’t walked back traditiones custodes either
- The clergy in Charlotte just appealed to Rome
- The bishop took away the thriving Latin masses, restricting it to one small chapel in a corner of the diocese that can’t hold everyone
- Banned altar rails
- I think you are mistaken that high fertility means anything in the immediate term
- I used to live on a block that had a public school that was a former Catholic parish school
- The diocese sold it due to low enrollment
- Selling off properties as they are shuttered makes money
- I think a lot of religious leaders feel their job is quietly managing decline and not making too much fuss
About SSPX - Society of St. Pius X
Origins of SSPX
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) originated in 1970 in Switzerland as a priestly fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to preserve traditional Catholic priestly formation and liturgy in the wake of Vatican II.
Ecclesial approval and early status
- The local bishop of Fribourg, François Charrière, approved SSPX in 1970 as a “pious union of priests in the diocese,” initially on an experimental basis.
- This early approval meant SSPX initially existed within the canonical structures of the Church, not as a breakaway group.
- Rome initially sent visitors who gave favorable reviews of the seminary’s formation, underscoring that early tensions were not immediate.
Rapid growth
- As of 2025, SSPX reports about 1,482 members total (bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers).
- Of these, around 733 priests (excluding bishops) belong to the Society.
- Estimates place 600,000 or so faithful attending SSPX Masses worldwide.
- Internally, SSPX news sites emphasize that the Society “has experienced constant growth” since 1970, with new locations opening every year.
- In the United States, SSPX lists 20 priories and 103 chapels, plus retreat centers, which is “quite small” compared with hundreds of non‑SSPX parishes offering the TLM.
Commentators sometimes point out that, by priestly headcount, SSPX would rank among the larger priestly religious congregations if fully recognized: one claim placed them around 5th after Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and Augustinians, based on ~700 priests. That’s meant to highlight how unusual it is for a group of that size to remain canonically irregular.
The Birth Rates
There is strong evidence that Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) Catholics as a whole have higher fertility than other Catholics, but there is no hard, SSPX‑specific dataset that cleanly isolates “SSPX parishioners” from other TLM communities.
The best quantitative data are for TLM vs. Novus Ordo Catholics, not SSPX vs. non‑SSPX:
- A widely cited U.S. survey of Latin Mass attendees reported an average of 3.6 children per woman among TLM Catholics versus 2.3 among Catholics attending the ordinary (Novus Ordo) form.
- Commentators describe this as “nearly 60% larger family size” for TLM participants relative to ordinary‑form parishioners.
- Social‑science work on religiosity and fertility generally finds that more devout, frequently attending religious adherents have higher fertility and intended fertility than nominal believers, which fits these numbers.
Points of Divergence from the Vatican
1. Episcopal consecrations without papal mandate
- SSPX consecrated bishops without the required papal approval, most notably Marcel Lefebvre’s consecrations in 1988 and the new consecrations in 2026.
- The Vatican hasrepeatedly declared these consecrations a “schismatic act,” stressing that choosing bishops without a papal bull crosses a definitive canonical boundary.
- The latest decree explicitly states that this act created a formal schism and triggered automatic excommunication of the bishops involved.
2. Rejection of key aspects of Vatican II
- SSPX was founded explicitly “in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,” and continues to reject major elements of those reforms.
- They object to the Council’s promotion of the role of laypeople, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, seeing these as harmful concessions rather than legitimate developments.
- The group has accused the post‑conciliar Church of being “rife with heresies and errors” such as modernism and liberalism, positioning itself as the sole guardian of the “true faith.”
3. Liturgy and the Roman Rite
- SSPX insists on celebrating the pre‑Vatican II “ancient Latin Mass” and rejects the ordinary form of the Roman rite (the post‑conciliar Mass in vernacular languages) as a theological and pastoral mistake.
- They explicitly oppose the move to allow Mass in local languages, a reform the Vatican understands as legitimate and binding.
- In practice, they treat the new liturgy with deep suspicion or outright rejection, sometimes describing it as harmful to the faith.
4. The push for unity and interreligious dialogue
- Vatican II and subsequent popes have pursued structured dialogue and “thawing of relations” with Protestants, Orthodox, and non‑Christian religions; SSPX rejects this orientation.
- SSPX holds that the Catholic Church is the “one, true faith” and regards interfaith dialogue as unnecessary or positively dangerous, criticizing official policy of building inroads with other Christian communities.
- This stance conflicts with magisterial documents that frame ecumenism and interreligious dialogue as integral to contemporary Catholic mission.
5. Teaching on religious freedom
- A core doctrinal dispute is over Vatican II’s teaching on religious freedom (e.g., Dignitatis humanae), which SSPX critics often portray as incompatible with prior Catholic teaching.
- SSPX-associated arguments frequently claim the Council’s stance on religious liberty represents a rupture, not a development, and see this as evidence of near‑apostasy outside SSPX.
- The Vatican, by contrast, has consistently defended the Council’s teaching as authoritative and binding.
6. Attitude toward the post‑conciliar magisterium
- SSPX has long suggested that Church authorities since Vatican II “have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith and have been acting against holy tradition.”
- This includes a practical distrust of recent papal teachings and doctrinal offices, leading them to set their own doctrinal interpretations against official magisterial documents.
- The Vatican’s latest decree characterizes this stance as an “intentional rupture” in communion, hence schism.
7. Canonical status and sacramental discipline
- The Vatican now explicitly declares SSPX bishops and priests to be schismatic and excommunicated.
- It has invalidated or declared illicit SSPX administration of key sacraments, especially confession and marriage, reversing prior limited accommodations.
- Faithful who “adhere formally” to SSPX—regularly attend their Masses and share their doctrinal positions—are warned they themselves are considered schismatic and excommunicated.
8. Obedience to papal authority
- SSPX’s actions imply a parallel ecclesial structure that claims to be “more Catholic than the Holy See,” undermining the Vatican’s claim to supreme authority in matters of doctrine, liturgy, and discipline.
- The recent decree emphasizes that continuing in SSPX while rejecting papal directives constitutes a deliberate break with Church unity.
The Church Had This Coming
Pointed out to us by a friend:
- The CCP basically chooses bishops and Rome OKs them: There is a secret 2018 Vatican–China agreement that gives the Chinese state a decisive role in proposing bishops, with the pope retaining theoretical veto power, and in practice Rome has often ended up accepting party‑approved candidates.
- They keep pushing back on Latin mass even though people really like it
- Pope Leo hasn’t walked back traditiones custodes
- Traditionis custodes is the 2021 decree by Pope Francis that imposed strong limits on celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal. It requires bishops to get Vatican permission for certain uses of the old rite and generally discourages new communities centered on it.
- After Vatican II, they began removing alter rails, which foster reverence and clarify the sanctuary’s sacredness—plus support kneeling communion
- Historically, the rail marked off the sanctuary from the nave and provided a place for people to kneel to receive Communion while the priest moved along the rail. This reflected the older theology and practice where the sanctuary was treated as a distinct, more sacred space and Communion was almost always received kneeling at the rail
- Practically, it’s helpful for churches that have lots of children around
They also kind of benefit from their low-fertility mainstream
- They make money from selling properties that shut down
- They’re King Henry VIII-ing themselves
Other Schisms
Orthodox
There is an intra‑Orthodox rupture in communion centered on the Moscow Patriarchate and several Greek‑tradition churches, but it’s not that big of a deal in comparison and it’s more political (with the Catholic Church, it’s about doctrine; here it’s about communion—In this case, both sides still share the same theology and sacraments)
Basically, since 2018, the Russian Orthodox church has severed Eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and certain churches under its influence (notably Greece, Alexandria, Cyprus).
- This means bishops and priests of these churches no longer concelebrate together, and Moscow has instructed its faithful not to receive communion in those Greek‑tradition churches.
This is downstream of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Constantinople granted independence to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2018, which Moscow argues violates canonical tradition and its own claim to Ukraine as its territory.
The dispute raises questions such as who can grant independent, whether schismatics can be received back by a patriarch other than the one they left, and whether the Ecumenical Patriarch can act as a kind of “Eastern pope” beyond his jurisdiction
Where things stand: As of recent assessments, Moscow is out of communion with Constantinople, Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus, but both blocs remain in communion with most other Orthodox churches.
Anglican Schism
This one’s more similar to the SSPX schism.
Anglicanism is presently experiencing what many observers openly describe as a de facto schism, driven largely by disputes over sexuality, gender, and the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
- Over roughly the last 20–30 years, conservative Anglican provinces (especially in the Global South) have progressively distanced themselves from the Church of England and other liberal Western provinces over issues like same‑sex blessings and women’s ordination.
- In 2025–26 this moved from tension to formal break: the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) movement and allied provinces announced that they no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the traditional Instruments of Communion.
- GAFCON‑aligned provinces have announced that they will not participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, will not contribute to Anglican Communion structures, and will amend constitutions to remove references to Canterbury.
- Estimates suggest the global Anglican family may end up split roughly in half, with each side claiming continuity with authentic Anglican identity
Issues driving the split
- The immediate flashpoints include the Church of England’s decisions to bless same‑sex couples and to appoint a woman (Sarah Mullally) as Archbishop of Canterbury, both seen by conservatives as symbols of “unbiblical and revisionist teachings.”
- Beneath these are deeper disputes about the nature of Anglican authority: whether Canterbury has any binding global role, and whether doctrinal and moral teaching can be set locally without reference to shared historic standards like the Jerusalem Declaration (2008).
- Conservative leaders frame their move as faithfulness to Scripture and to the English Reformation’s theology, while critics see it as a schism that fractures Anglicanism into two rival communions.
They’d prefer not to call it a schism: GAFCON and sympathetic writers resist the word “schism,” preferring “realignment” or “reformation” and insisting they are not founding a new church but restoring Anglicanism around its original doctrinal center.
Is this normal? Is this a promising sign?
Schisms are a recurring and fairly typical feature of religious history; what’s unusual today is more the visibility and global simultaneity than the fact that multiple splits exist at once.
What do we think about it? Keen on Malcolm’s opinion.