Vatican (kath.net) The decisions of the Second Vatican Council were not accepted by all Catholics. Some contented themselves with critical statements, but Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who served, among other things, as Archbishop of Dakar, rejected even fundamental reforms initiated by the Council, including the declaration Nostra Aetate—the declaration that regulates the new relationship between the Church and the Jews. Furthermore, he rejected the liturgical reform of 1965 as well as the ecumenical movement. His firm rejection met with fierce opposition within the Church. In order to institutionalize his conservative position, he founded the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X (FSSPX) in 1970. Through the mediation of the then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, an agreement could be reached, but in 1988 Lefebvre consecrated four bishops, which the Church regarded as a schismatic act that resulted in excommunication. Through a process of clemency, Benedict XVI lifted this ecclesiastical penalty, while upholding the canonical and theological positions.
In the meantime, not only Bishop Lefebvre has passed away, but also two of the bishops he had ordained. The two remaining bishops are well advanced in age, so there is a risk that upon their passing there will be no bishop left who could ordain priests, which would result in the priesthood of the FSSPX dying out. To prevent this, new bishops are to be consecrated on July 1, 2026. This has met with a pushback from within the Church. About this pushback, we spoke with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Lothar C. Rilinger: Can you describe which resolutions of Vatican II Bishop Lefebvre and the FSSPX reject?
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller: Above all, in the teaching on religious freedom as a fundamental right before God alone—free from state coercion and ideological indoctrination—to follow the truth that is plausible to conscience, they see a deviation from the Catholic belief that the Catholic Church alone proclaims and presents for belief the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ.
The Fraternity of St. Pius X interprets religious freedom in the spirit of 19th-century relativistic liberalism, which rejects revelation and turned religion into a matter of taste and subjective feeling rather than a quest for truth. In contrast, according to the FSSPX, the Catholic state has a duty to promote the Catholic religion as the only true one and to deny error any right to existence in the public sphere.
In the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, however, the Council makes precisely this distinction between religious freedom as a natural human right and the freedom of the human person to respond to the revealed Word of God with reason and freedom and to recognize in Christ the fullness of the truth of God and of humanity.
Under today’s conditions of a pluralistic society, and especially in anti-religious socialist or radical Islamist states, however, we can be glad if public authority does not interfere in religion and morality. Invoking freedom of religion and conscience, Catholics—especially within the EU, which unfortunately tends to be hostile towards Christianity—can exercise their right to reject abortion, euthanasia, and the relativization of marriage between a man and a woman.
To still speak here of Catholic states that are supposed to use state measures to socially enforce the still-valid doctrine of the Catholic Church’s necessity for salvation seems rather anachronistic.
The FSSPX’s objections to the ecumenical quest for the unity of all Christians in the one Catholic Church—which finds its visible expression in the Pope—likewise miss the point of the resolutions of Vatican II. In no way did the Council call into question the uniqueness of the Church of Christ, which the declaration Dominus Jesus, made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the year 2000 under Cardinal Ratzinger, affirmed. The goal, rather, was to acknowledge non-Catholic Christians, who had not personally separated themselves from the Catholic Church but who, in good faith, hold fast to the claim to truth of the denomination in which they were raised, and to seek with them ways to rediscover unity in faith, the sacraments, and the Church’s constitution, as Jesus himself, the founder of the Church as the visible expression of his unity with the Father (Jn. 17), had intended.
Rilinger: What are the dogmatic consequences when a Catholic priest is no longer willing to uphold the entirety of the Church’s doctrine?
Cardinal Müller: Through the sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops, priests, and deacons are bound both internally and externally to proclaim the faith of the Church through the word and to bear witness to it by their lives. If they deviate significantly and evidently and do not heed the admonitions of their superior, canonical penalties may be imposed on them depending on the circumstances, up to and including removal from their offices; however, due to the objective efficacy of the sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, and in this case the Sacrament of Holy Orders), they do not lose the character imprinted upon them at ordination. This is the well-known distinction between the unauthorized yet valid administration of the sacraments.
In his response to Donatism, St. Augustine himself had already asserted that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the personal holiness, morality, or ecclesiality of the minister, because Christ is the true agent in the sacraments. The Catholic Church recognizes the sacraments in the Orthodox Church because it has validly ordained bishops and priests, even though it does not fully and completely recognize the primacy of the Roman Church and does not live in full ecclesial communion with the successor of St. Peter, the Pope.
Rilinger: In 1988, Pope John Paul II excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–1991). This ecclesiastical penalty was later revoked. What are the legal and canonical consequences of excommunication for a Catholic?
Cardinal Müller: The excommunication of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January 2009 in order to facilitate the reintegration of the FSSPX into the Catholic Church, after this possibility had emerged in the course of the dialogue. However, there was unexpected polemic against Pope Benedict after the fact when it became known that Bishop Williamson had denied or at least downplayed the Holocaust. The issue of ecclesiastical punishment and the personal stance of one of the four protagonists on the Holocaust, however, have nothing to do with each other in and of themselves.
Full canonical reintegration of the FSSPX did not occur, however, because the Fraternity clung to its allegations against the Second Vatican Council and accused the Church as a whole—due to post-conciliar developments, but also due to actual aberrations from the Catholic faith by individual bishops and theologians and malpractices in the liturgy—of no longer being fully Catholic in the sense of the tradition that the FSSPX upholds and feels obliged to defend as solely valid—even against the Pope if necessary. However, the Fraternity seems to notice how this contradicts the Catholic belief that in cases of doubt the Roman Pope is the final arbiter of Catholicity.
Rilinger: Does the lifting of excommunication serve the same function as, in state criminal procedure law, the annulment of a conviction by a judgment that constitutes full rehabilitation, since the criminal charge is withdrawn in its entirety? In other words, does the lifting of excommunication also mean that the grounds for excommunication are considered to be no longer extant?
Cardinal Müller: This cannot be compared to state criminal law. Ecclesiastical penalties must be distinguished from the penalties for sin, which God alone imposes and forgives, especially in the Sacrament of Penance; from the disciplinary penalties of the Church, which are intended to admonish the offender and lead him back to the right path; and from so-called coercive penalties. In the case of a lifelong ban on exercising the priestly ministry, the issue is not a penitential punishment for the act, which is dealt with civilly by the state and ecclesiastically in the sacrament of penance, but rather the protection of the faithful from further misconduct by a clergyman or church employee who cannot hide behind his ecclesiastical authority.
Rilinger: If the lifting of the excommunication does not constitute rehabilitation—what does it mean, then?
Card. Müller: As I said, this was the unusual path of leniency taken by Benedict XVI, who hoped that the lifting of the excommunication would lead to the discernment and conversion of the reprimanded FSSPX bishops, and who did not anticipate that some would interpret his great concession as a sign of weakness.
The Pope will always go to the limits of what is possible in his ministry of ensuring or restoring the unity of the Church, while those who have strayed, in their spiritual arrogance, take this as an opportunity to set conditions. The Pope may make certain concessions regarding secondary matters, but not concerning the substance of the faith, the sacraments, or the sacramental constitution of the Church, established by the Apostles with Peter at the head, i.e. the bishops and the Roman Pontiff. For the sake of unity, the Pope can readily grant the FSSPX the right to celebrate Holy Mass and the other sacraments in the liturgical form prior to the liturgical reform. For one must distinguish the dogmatic substance of the sacraments from the various rites in which they are celebrated.
With great wisdom, Benedict distinguished within the Latin Rite: the renewed liturgy as the ordinary form and the (so-called “Tridentine”) celebration according to the 1962 Missal as the extraordinary form within the same Latin Rite. Apart from the Latin Rite, there are actually many other (20–25) legitimate rites within the Catholic Church, especially in the Eastern Catholic Churches.
The liturgy as such is not the problem, but rather the unfounded accusation by the FSSPX that the Catholic Church, under Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis and Leo XIV, has dogmatically deviated from the Catholic faith, absurdly counting the Novus Ordo Mass among the deviations, which according to the Fraternity contains dogmatic errors, such as the fact that its sacrificial character has, if not denied, at least been obscured in favor of a mere memorial meal.
Rilinger: The accusation of not upholding the full teaching of the Church thus remains even after the lifting of the excommunication. But for what reason did the Church nevertheless refrain from explicitly speaking of a schism following the ordination of four bishops by Bishop Lefebvre, even though the denial of even a single part of the teaching is actually regarded as a secession?
Card. Müller: Some have spoken of a schism, others have not. Officially, the matter was left in limbo so as not to consolidate, through harsh language, the very situation one was trying to overcome. A schism also entails that the parties concerned deliberately break away from the Catholic Church, its teachings, and the criteria of its unity, particularly the unity in the Roman Pontiff. The FSSPX has not yet formally expressed this in such terms, but it sees itself as a community of necessity that will remain at a distance until the millions of Catholics who have fallen for modernism, along with thousands of priests and bishops and the current Pope, have returned to that Church, which the FSSPX as the holy remnant of the one true Catholic Church has preserved.
In a statement addressed to Pope Leo XIV from May 2026, the Fraternity calls for a rejection of the conciliar and post-conciliar “errors” that contradict the “pre-conciliar tradition” and that have crept into the Church despite the Fraternity’s warnings, and against which the Magisterium has failed to intervene. The self-conception demanded by the FSSPX, namely that the Catholic Church is the only community in the apostolic tradition that can claim to be founded by Christ, has, of course, never been questioned by the Magisterium. As for the demand repeated here that there should be no religiously neutral state and that the Church must subject the state to Christ and to itself, the FSSPX should maybe name the countries in which it intends to implement this program.
Of course, for every Catholic, the spiritual authority of the Pope, who is the guardian of truth, peace, and human dignity, stands above the worldly authorities, which are guided by interests, power, and influence. But much is already achieved when states stay out of the question of truth and respect the natural fundamental rights of their citizens—above all their freedom of religion and conscience—and do not, against all common sense, seek to define marriage, for example, as anything other than the union of a man and a woman. All orthodox Catholics are fully justified in saying that the so-called blessings of same-sex couples or those living in other irregular relationships are objectively sinful, but that pastoral care for such persons is necessary in the name of the Good Shepherd, so that they may walk the path of following Christ in accordance with His commandments. But the FSSPX should raise this voice within the Church and not against the Church, thereby giving the impression that the heretical deviations into atheistic rainbow ideology have been granted any right to exist within the Church. Athanasius and Augustine did not distance themselves from the Church while she was still struggling to definitively overcome Arianism and Donatism.
Rilinger: Leading representatives of the FSSPX repeatedly assert that they see themselves as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church, even though, for dogmatic reasons, they are unable to accept certain decisions of the Council, though they do, in principle, follow most of its resolutions. For what reason is the Church unwilling to tolerate the theology of FSSPX—especially given that the Fraternity is considered appealing by many devout Catholics and its liturgical practices are also recognized as legitimate by the Church?
Cardinal Müller: One cannot be a good Catholic if one subjects binding statements of the Church’s Magisterium to one’s own subjective standards. The Monophysites claimed to be faithful to the Council of Ephesus (431) and the teaching of the Church Father Cyril of Alexandria, and then rejected the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which taught the unity of Christ’s divine and human natures in the divine person of the Son within the Trinity. The legitimate differences among theological schools (Thomists, Scotists) and the intellectual originality of individual theologians (such as Romano Guardini or Hans Urs von Balthasar) must not be confused with the necessary unity in the teaching of the Apostles and the Church, as it has been formulated above all in the Councils.
The FSSPX would have to explain the difference between its stance and Luther’s statement during the Leipzig Disputation (1519), which burst the unity of the Church and undermined its authority, when he said: “Even councils can err!”—a statement that also called into question the Pope’s ultimate authority and would place condemned heretics who were rehabilitated as better interpreters of revelation, above the Magisterium.
The entire hermeneutics of the Catholic faith (developed already by Irenaeus of Lyon against the Gnostics, i.e. the know-it-alls of the ages) would be shattered if, outside the Magisterium of the bishops in communion with the Pope, one were to recognize yet another human authority which, based on subjective feeling and discretion, feels authorized to determine the unity of the respectively most recent council with the preceding Magisterium.
From a purely human and theological perspective, too, it is inconceivable that two thousand bishops at the Council and all the popes to date have erred in dogmatic matters or deviated from the apostolic tradition, save for a single bishop who, through illegal episcopal ordinations alone, ensures the survival of the Church, which Jesus promised to the Apostle Peter, whom he regards as the rock of his Church.
Rilinger: Among other things, the priests of the FSSPX reject the new liturgy established by the Second Vatican Council and insist on celebrating Mass according to the Tridentine Rite, which had been in use for nearly 500 years prior to the Council. This rite is held in high esteem, especially in France, and attracts many Catholics, particularly since Benedict XVI and Leo XIV, unlike Francis, have publicly expressed a strong affinity for this rite. Could this old rite, or a combination of the old and the new rite, open up possibilities for encouraging more believers to attend church again?
Cardinal Müller: The old or new rite is not the problem.
Both sides—unfortunately also the authoritarian agitators in the Roman Dicastery for the Liturgy—do not properly appreciate the theological distinction between the substance of the sacraments and the various liturgical forms. A mere disciplinary suppression of the old rite and the general suspicion of its adherents as deniers of Vatican II are not only pastorally questionable but also dogmatically untenable.
I myself have considered the restriction of the celebration of Mass in the old rite to be very unwise from a pastoral standpoint, not because I am a supporter of the old liturgy myself, but because as a Catholic and especially as a theologian, one must also acknowledge the spiritual richness of the older rite, and because there is no justification for haughtily elevating oneself above one’s friends. Incidentally, the liturgical reform did not create a new rite, but merely simplified the previous rite, which itself had emerged from a not always homogeneous development, so that the faithful could participate more easily, both internally and externally (in the vernacular).
Rilinger: The FSSPX is planning new episcopal ordinations to ensure that more priests can be ordained in the future and thus the continued existence of the Fraternity can be guaranteed. For what reason are these ordinations rejected by the Church and regarded as grounds for a schism, even though the ordination of the original four bishops by Bishop Lefebvre was judged unlawful, but not invalid nor constituting a schism?
Cardinal Müller: No one has a right to episcopal consecration, which belongs to the Church and not to individual groups so as to ensure the survival of their organization under purely human law. For then the Church would fall apart into interest groups.
Even if the ordination by a schismatic bishop—even in open opposition to the Pope—is valid, it cannot be dogmatically and morally justified by invoking the salvation of one’s own clientele. Only in a state of extreme persecution, when contact with the universal Church and with Rome is completely impossible, would the ordination of a bishop be morally justified in conscience before God and in the unity with the Pope that is presupposed in the faith.
The appropriate solution would be for the FSSPX not to presume to dictate to the Pope the conditions for its full reintegration into the Catholic Church, but rather, in accordance with the First Vatican Council, to which it so readily appeals, to acknowledge that one cannot be fully Catholic without full communion with Pope Leo XIV. And the Pope’s supreme teaching authority does not derive from the sociological truth that in every community one person must have the final say, but from the institution of the Pope as the Successor of Peter and from the Holy Spirit, who assists him in the exercise of his magisterium and his ministry for the unity of the Church.
Rilinger: If a schism were to occur, the Church would have to part ways with many of the faithful—which would represent a significant loss. Can the Church afford such a loss?
Cardinal Müller: Yes, that would be very sad and a wound inflicted on the Body of Christ, which is the Church. But there have also been many schisms throughout Church history, especially in the 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation led not to a reform of the Church but to the division of Christendom.
One would hope that the FSSPX will not remain confined to its own circle, but instead look to the Church as a whole and learn from the mistakes of Church history. The Fraternity should not follow the path of the Donatists, the Jansenists, and the Old Catholics. One extreme does not justify the other.
Neither so-called progressivism, which surrenders the revealed truth of Christ to the shifting currents of the zeitgeist, nor traditionalism, which reduces the entire tradition of the Church to a few fixed ideas, can be the way of the Church that the Risen Lord has chosen as a sacrament, that is, as a sign and instrument.
Rilinger: Do you see possibilities for reconciliation, even from the perspective that this would preserve the self-understanding and distinct character of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X? Or can you imagine reconciliation only if the Fraternity completely renounces its own path?
Cardinal Müller: It could certainly be recognized as a kind of personal prelature if—like every Catholic—the Fraternity acknowledges the Church’s teaching in its entirety, including the decrees of Vatican II, as they can be authoritatively declared binding only by the bishops in unity with and under the Pope.
Rilinger: The respective Pope is not only the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but also of other Eastern Catholic Churches, whose constitutions, however, differ from that of the Roman Catholic Church. Would it therefore be possible to grant the Fraternity of St. Pius X the same theological and canonical status as the Eastern Churches?
Card. Müller: The constitution of divine law of the one Catholic Church in the various rites is the same everywhere, so that every local Church is governed by a validly ordained bishop in apostolic succession and tradition, but in unity with the entire College of Bishops, over which the Pope presides as the perpetual principle and foundation of the entire Church in revealed truth. Only human canon law—that is, its concrete forms—differs among the various Eastern Catholic Churches, which are united into patriarchates, but by no means independent of the Magisterium and the ministry of unity of the Pope.
The FSSPX is not a local Church that could claim a special status. It is merely a loose association of priests and faithful who see themselves as a bulwark against the supposed errors that, in their opinion, are promoted or tolerated by Rome. From a background of theological reason of the Catholic faith, it is difficult to comprehend where they derive and claim their supervisory function over the Pope.
Rilinger: Or can you imagine that a reformed FSSPX that still deviates in some aspects from the Church’s doctrine, could nevertheless be regarded as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church?
Cardinal Müller: According to that view, the Catholic Church would be merely a loose association of various doctrinal opinions, as in the Anglican Church, whose unity is founded solely on the will of a secular monarch. The unity of the Church refers above all to faith, together with hope and love, the seven holy sacraments, and its sacramental, episcopal constitution.
In the official teaching of the Church, there are varying degrees of binding force depending on their bearing on the central contents of Revelation or on natural truths such as freedom of conscience or every person’s unconditional right to life. The statements of social teaching are not on the same level with faith in the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, or the sacraments as means of grace. On the subject of religious freedom, a careful reading of the Vatican Decree is necessary so that differences in expression from earlier magisterial documents may be recognized not in content but in relation to changing audiences.
Anyone who wishes to remain in the unity of the Church will profess faith in Christ, the true foundation of her unity, but also in Peter, who, together with the Apostles and their teaching, is the secondary foundation of her unity and its unifying summit (vertex), as Thomas Aquinas states in his “Explanation of the Apostles’ Creed” (Article 9). One can hardly accuse the universal teacher of a lack of fidelity to the Catholic faith or suspect him of being a pioneer of modernism when, in the same passage, he says in the words of St. Augustine that the Church can neither be destroyed by external enemies nor its truth undermined by internal errors. “They shall make war against thee, but they shall not overcome thee” (cf. Jeremiah 1:19).
And that is why only the Church of Peter has always stood firm in the faith and remained free from error. For what Jesus said to Peter—according to Thomas Aquinas—applies directly to his successor as well, and that is Pope Leo XIV: “I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail.” (Lk 22:32).
Rilinger: Thank you very much for these explanations.
(Editor’s note: This kath.net interview was posted on May 27, 2026. It was translated into English for CWR by Frank Nitsche-Robinson, and is posted here with kind permission.)
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“The FSSPX…sees itself as a community of necessity that will remain at a distance until the millions of Catholics who have fallen for modernism, along with thousands of priests and bishops and the current Pope, have returned to that Church, which the FSSPX as the holy remnant of the one true Catholic Church has preserved.”
Spot on. Anyone who denies Rome’ fall into Modernist Apostasy hasn’t been reading CWR…
All those who claim the election of Jorge Bergoglio could have possibly been valid have fallen into “the false spirit” of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, that rejoices with modernism.
Fr Gabriele Amorth: “One day Padre Pio said to me very sorrowfully: ‘You know, Gabriele? It is Satan who has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false church.’”
Fidicuia Supplicans… really happened.
Key words: “sees itself….”
“The Fraternity of St. Pius X interprets religious freedom in the spirit of 19th-century relativistic liberalism, which rejects revelation and turned religion into a matter of taste and subjective feeling rather than a quest for truth.”
This sounds more like a description of Vatican II than what the SSPX was doing.
The SSPX has a preferred worship and rejects any other rite of the Catholic Church. This is not Catholic. It is protestant.
Nonsense Gerard.
The SSPX only takes objection to the 1970 freemasonic rescript of the Catholic Mass.
The SSPX also takes objection at the second Vatican council and the Pope’s authority, hence the reason why they are proceeding with these illicit consecrations. They are missing the first part of the 4 marks that define the True Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The SSPX lack unity with the Rome and the Pope, and therefore cannot be considered part of the True Church. They may appear to be during their illicit Masses, but as the old saying goes, looks can be deceiving.
Indeed… an ape of the Catholic Church promoting blessing of soddomy could fool even the elite via blind obedience.
But is blind obedience Catholic, DTS, when one’s conscience knows Catholic Truth is otherwise?
Catholic Truth or Fidicuia Supplicans? Can’t have it both ways…
Mr CN
The SSPX are the ones who can’t have it both ways. Part of traditional Catholicism is adhering to Rome and the Papacy. It is not blind obedience.
Without the Barque of Peter, we’d be fractured into countless groups of infighting people with no foundation. That’s why Christ established the Papacy. We’d be no different from the Anglicans and Lutherans who split from the Church because they didn’t like Rome’s decisions and authority.
You can still remain in union with Rome and not necessarily have to like everything that comes out of there. Fiducia is a good example. I personally don’t like it, but I can’t in good faith reject Rome because of that particular document. Rome is where the heart of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is found.
It won’t be found in Protestant churches and it certainly won’t be found in a rogue group of priests and bishops who want to supersede Rome’s authority.
Athanasius stood up to Arianism, just as SSPX is standing up to Modernism.
History is being written…
Athanasius never professed void consecrations as valid, Cracked.
An Orwellian reversal in your comment Gerard. It is Protestant to create do it yourself changing truth, like many do in today’s Vatican. It is Catholic to recogize that truth, because it originates exclusively with God, never changes.
The SSPX is not Catholic they recognize their own truth and separate from the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. It may be hard for human minds to understand but God Himself founded His Church this way.
“The SSPX is not Catholic they recognize their own truth”.
The SSPX simply profess the faith as taught by Rome down to 1962, and reject Modernism. They use traditional Council of Trent Catechism. To suggest that THAT truth is at odds with YOUR version of post-conciliar Catholicism is to admit that your religion is not the Faith of your fathers. Which is simply not possibile for a Catholic. It is a contradiction in terms.
Cracked, the faith of all time does not profess void consecrations nor profess continuing a movement when its founding member is excommunicate.
These would be a contradiction in terms as well as forms -simultaneously- of defiance and undermining. To argue they’re “orthodox and meek” does nothing.
JPII didn’t have to positively expel everybody you know, just the head.
There is no such thing as personalized “truth.” No one possesses truth. Truth possesses us.
Submission to God, involves the recognition that no one creates any truth at all, let alone “their own truth.” Ideas that are truth are true regardless of who gives witness or how few agree, and falsehoods are false regardless of who or how many accept the falsehoods.
It has been men like Pope Francis and now, Pope Leo who have denied, at particular moments, immutable truth.
There are over 20 different rites using “preferred liturgies”. The Anglican Ordinariate brought with them, a “preferred liturgy”.
Are they therefore, Protestant?
“All in the Church must preserve unity in essentials. But let all, according to the gifts they have received enjoy a proper freedom, in their various forms of spiritual life and discipline, in their different liturgical rites, and even in their theological elaborations of revealed truth.”
DECREE ON ECUMENISM
UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO
It seems odd to me that the “TLM” doesn’t enjoy a “proper freedom”.
-UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO
The SSPX prefers the TLM but unfortunately rejects Vatican II and the vernacular Mass.
The Latin Mass is merely a form of the 1 Roman Rite. It is not a separate sui iuris Church that utilizes the Roman Rite, so there lies the difference.
There are many (23 or 24) sui iuris Eastern Rite Churches that use their own ancient and specific liturgical traditions. There’s 1 Byzantine Rite, but 14 different Churches use them. Except they recognize Vatican II, papal infallability, and the vernacular Mass as valid and licit, unlike the SSPX.
The SSPX accepts papal infallibility, properly understood, and Catholics are not required to accept everything in VII documents. Pope Benedict didn’t.
It’s not about the extraordinary rite. It’s about papal authority.
Indeed Gerard. Does a Pope have the authority to change Catholic Truth? Can the magisterium be used with authority to undermine the perennial deposit of faith in order to meet freemasonic Agenda 2030 objectives on equity?
Catholicism is not Modernism.
Exactly Gerard. And it’s also about wresting control.
Popes have no authority to excommunicate anyone for being Catholic. When they try, their actions are not valid.
Yeah, I am shocked that his Eminence would say it like that. Its a breezy comment, as though a Confessional state didn’t exist prior to the 19 century, which is obviously absurd. It is also impossible to see in this any kind of “hermeneutic of continuity” on Church/State doctrines with this statement. Its not hard to replace opposition to gay marriage/female ordination/abortion after “To still speak here”…”seems rather anachronistic” and you can see why this problem causes the whole structure to fall down.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller with intelligence and faith establishes that a loose knit compromise of the Church with the SSPX [which was my hope for reconciliation] would similarly render Catholicism a loose knit association of varied beliefs – rather than the one, true Church.
Müller clarifies the issues at stake, first of all retention of the doctrinal integrity of Catholicism within the framework of Vatican II. For those of us who object to Vatican II, condemning the Novus Ordo as an error, it’s important that they study Müller’s reasoning.
And a looseknit compromise with the Anglican ordinariate is what?
Bishops for the Anglican Ordinariate are appointed by the Roman pontiff and ordained by a Catholic bishop. While Anglican Ordinariate priests can be married they cannot become bishops. See regs for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.
The replies are worthy of a subject matter expert, such as those a legal scholar, turning on very fine points, and splitting frog hairs, which are finer than normal hairs.
But among all the assurances of the Church maintaining its fidelity, due to never formally and officially denying ancient teachings, it still has allowed cardinals, bishops, priests and faithful to implement their own twisted versions of the religion which in fact have run roughshod over core beliefs and practices, to suppress and seek to destroy those who do still subscribe to the ancient beliefs and forms, while fomenting that very division against which he speaks.
And all the while, maintaining that the unity still exists, where clearly someone could not be in unity with popes of such disparate doctrinal teachings as Benedict and Francis (the horrors against the Faith by Francis are too many to list), past organizational fidelity of lip service or “I was only following orders”. Meanwhile, vanishingly small to approaching near zero action against those within the Church striving quite successfully to radically change what the Church teaches and practices, in contradiction to all which came before.
The main emphasis seem to be in protecting the hierachy, and its reputation, and not in guarding the Faith. It has become totally self serving as merely a sacrament dispensing station of near zero spiritual practice or education.
This is excellent. Thank you, Cardianl Muller.
I pray that the current situation is resolved without schism and believe reasonable minds should be able to bring this about. The SSPX must acknowledge the legitimacy of Vatican II while retaining the right to seek the clarification and refinement of contested issues. At the same time the Vatican must treat all members of the Church fairly and equitably. The SSPX should received the same consideration and respect as the German bishops and the Father James Martins in the Church. Failure to do so at a time when the Church continues to hemorrhage membership would serve neither the SSPX nor the Catholic Church.
Right on bro!
Dude, what’s up with that?
Thank you so much for this article/interview. It was very helpful in understanding the historical background.
I truly hope the SSPX & Rome can work things out.
We need to remember Jesus came to set the world on fire.
The SSPX should trustingly rely on the Vatican authorities for future ordinations etc? Most unlikely, if the bishops put forward are anything like Cardinal Muller. In his answers to these questions (which look like he wrote them himself) he exaggerates and fudges.
If Cardinal Muller says the SSPX is wrong on theology, why doesn’t he answer the infallible ordinary papal magisterium on religious liberty (many hundreds of years of it) which the SSPX quotes chapter and verse, and which some passages in Vatican II and the Cardinal’s answer itself appear to contrast?
How can Muller compare the SSPX for citing pre-Vatican II teaching on religious liberty with Donatists and Arians, who invented ideas.
Vatican II asserts that God does not refuse to use Churches apart from the Catholic Church as means of salvation. This has nothing to do with the red herring in the Cardinal’s answer about individuals being guided by their lights and good will if they are outside the Church through no fault. As far as religious bodies are concerned, the Church traditionally taught that people can be saved in them but never by them.
Muller says the SSPX “absurdly count[s] the Novus Ordo Mass among the deviations” following Vatican II”. Has he forgotten the scandalous General Instruction of the Roman Missal in 1969 which had to be revised the next year because the protestantising modernism in it was so blasted obvious. As for the Novus Ordo, its expression of Catholic doctrine was dimininished and inadequate, as Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci wrote at the time.
The book, The Rhine flows Into the Tiber, explains how an appearance of unity was achieved. The most ambiguous documents were passed after great opposition and due to the insertion of calming phrases, leaving the original misunderstanding intact, to be repeated ad nauseam, as Cardinal Muller does again today, by NOT interpreting Vatican II in the light of the papal magisterium that the SSPX continuously cites.
Since Cardinal Muller and so many others refuse to interpret Vatican II in the light of pre-Vatican II teaching, the Church of the future will have to do it by clarifying what is to be understood by these texts. Like the Council of Constance, Vatican II will be revisited by the Church of the near future.
Vatican II, like Constance, wasn’t a very Roman council. It was place where those unsettled free thinkers from the north had a field day. For Muller to assert that the SSPX has “not yet formally” renounced its adhesion to Rome is getting to be really stale wishful thinking. As the SSPX has “not yet” renounced its adhesion to Rome for most of the Cardinal’s long life, he had better not hold his breath waiting for it. Archbishop Lefebvre was much, much more Roman than he is.
A schism has been in the air since the lack of clarity as to the fact that although we have Free Will and thus the free will to Love The Blessed Trinity, a well formed Catholic conscience, in order to be, in essence , a Catholic conscience, must be in Communion with Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, Church, in The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ.
I’ll highlight this as the “money quote:”
“From a purely human and theological perspective, too, it is inconceivable that two thousand bishops at the Council and all the popes to date have erred in dogmatic matters or deviated from the apostolic tradition, save for a single bishop who, through illegal episcopal ordinations alone, ensures the survival of the Church, which Jesus promised to the Apostle Peter, whom he regards as the rock of his Church.”
Recall that on each document, the votes of the 2,000+ bishops at the Second Vatican Council were decidedly lopsided in favor. Essentially, the SSPX is asserting that the gates of hell have prevailed.
Abdrew, Fidicuia Supplicans used the official Magisterium of the Catholic Church to promote the blessing of sodomy in accordance with Agenda 2030 that His Holiness Francis signed.
The post-conciliar Synodal Superlodge has a foot in the gates of hell?
The gates of hell cannot prevail, because The Deposit Of Faith, grounded in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture cannot be changed.
For “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
Fidicuia Supplicans… really happened. Denial won’t make it go away.
You may not personally agree the SSA persons are worthy of Christ’s Grace but that is not the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Blessing active SSA secularly married COUPLES – COUPLES being the key word used by Tucho’s Dicastery for the Deconstruction of the Faith – is opposed to Catholic Truth ad33-1962 because soddomy is one of the sins that cry vengeance.
Actually, using hyperbolic speech to accuse another of denying dignity to SSA persons is not worthy of Christ’s grace.
St. Paul’s letter to the Romans at 3:23 has it: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Considering that no one is worthy, why would someone think that SSA persons may be?
Christ died for us all and while we were sinners. His Grace is intended for the sinner but not the sin.
>Anathasius has entered the chat.
Anathasius as in anathemous, anastomosis, Athanasius, analogous, or something more or less?
As in Athanasius
That’s what I get for ignoring spell check, even though it’s a nag.
“‘If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it is partly because that is the road they generally start out on.’
This variation of the proverb ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is a way of emphasizing that people often begin their actions on a path toward negative outcomes — not because they set out with evil intent, but because their initial steps are misguided, poorly planned, or based on flawed assumptions.” ~ Wikipedia
There is an admitted controversy as to whether, at VCII, Archbishop LeFebvre voted both against or for (following the pope’s signing) Dignitatis Humanae. Nevertheless, shortly after VCII’s end and throughout the remainder of his life, LeFebvre denounced the document.
Maybe the starting point is wrong sometimes but other times, there was a good start but there came a fork in the routing and they take the wrong turn.
It never was a “VATICAN II problem”. What we are facing is an OVERALL problem affecting everybody irrespective of creed and every religion too. Also, the Council then NEVER SAID -: “Never speak about Christian doctrine but ALWAYS talk secular philosophy with secular people of certain particular extremes and with religious minded people who go along with that prevailing stylization”.
Permit me share a portion of an email from today’s Life Site News….
In 1948, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen sounded the alarm about a coming “counter-church”.
He called it “the Ape of the Church” because the Devil “is the ape of God.”
Sheen warned that it would have “all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content.”
“It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist,” he said, “that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”
Sheen was describing how Communism could come to rival the Church, both in its structure and in men’s hearts.
But the reality has proved far worse than even this warning.
That’s because the APE CHURCH is not an external rival like Communism troubling the faithful today, but a deception pretending to be the Catholic Church.
Many prominent churchmen have discussed this.
– Cardinal Burke spoke, in 2012, of clergy who thought they “were forming a new Church”, and that everything before Vatican II was defective.
– Cardinal Ratzinger said, in 1988, that many people were unsure “if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people.”
– Father Linus Clovis stated, in 2017, “that the Catholic Church and the anti-Church currently coexist in the same sacramental, liturgical and juridical space” – and that the anti-Church, “having grown stronger is now attempting to pass itself off as the true Church.”
Even Padre Pio is said to have warned the exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth:
It is Satan who has entered the womb of the Church, and within a while he will rule over a false church.
On September 24, Archbishop Sheen will be beatified.
It’s a great irony that Archbishop Sheen is being beatified under the very man who wants a “Synodal Church.”
LifeSiteNews is one of the only major news organizations prepared to call out this synodal “Ape Church” – and to carry on calling it out, no matter the cost.
When the May 2025 conclave chose Leo XIV, the Catholic media scene overlooked his first words from the Loggia: “We want to be a synodal Church.”
But do we really “want to be a synodal Church”?
Perhaps the elevation of Bishop Sheen is more of a clarification than just another duplicity? Likewise the role of the annual consistories of cardinals alongside—or above—the inherited Synodality thing—which is being recast as an “ecclesial assembly”— something like a town hall meeting within a broader communio? Key wording in Lumen Gentium is that the ordained clergy differ from the baptized in kind as well as degree. How can this actually work?
Encouraging that Pope Leo is devoting his Wednesday Audienes to the Council Documents rather than, say, the mongrel Synodality on Synodality. The latter, as a subversive substitute Council, is possibly being housebroken without worsening the rupture and being publicly tarred by the saboteurs as a vindictive reactionary and anachronism.
The Holy Father’s first words were “peace”. Much like Lifesite “news” you spread half truths to create division.
Girard, I’m done speaking my piece on this page. The vast majority of Catholics want to remain in union with the Pope and Rome. There’s definitely some anti-Vatican stuffed shirts on here, but you’ll never change their minds. Know that people like you and I are in the right place and not outside the Barque of Peter.
Foĺlowed by “We want to be a synodal Church.” Who is the “we” referring to? The sankt gallen lavender mafia? Cupich and chums? Tucho and friends? No pew-sitting Catholuc wants to be synodal… Except perhaps Gerard.
Pivotal remarks in this interview may sound like ships passing in the night, but the factual truth turns precisely on what the Council actually said and did regarding controverted points, rather than on the disruptions. EXAMPLES:
The “Explanatory Note” attached to LUMEN GENTIUM, regarding the “hierarchical communion” (among, not between the papacy and the bishops).
DEI VERBUM: modified to re-assert the value of Tradition: “the result is that the Church draws its certainty on all things revealed ‘not from Scripture alone’,” (n. 9). It also asserts the historicity of the Gospels: “whose historical nature it (the Council) affirms without hesitation” (n. 19).
The text on RELIGIOUS LIBERTY defines this as “immunity from coercion” in religious practices, and the liberty of the Church is also reiterated (n. 13)—not as the religious Liberalism of the 19th century (no one denies that relativism is more widespread today, only that the rights of persons are what is centrally at risk in pluralist/Secularist states (and in Islamic countries as Cardinal Muller now also observes).
Regarding ECUMENISM Pope Paul caused nineteen “interventions” to be inserted into the final document prior to the Council’s final vote. Important clarifications in a very few words:
(n. 1) Instead of “In truth, all are disciples of the Lord” with “In truth, all affirm [only affirm, not are] that they are disciples of the Lord.”
(n. 4) Replace “Recognizing…the presence of the gifts of the Spirit in the lives of others” with “…recognizing the ‘virtuous works’ in the lives of others.”
(n. 14) “not a few of these have [vague] apostolic origins” with “not a few of “these glory in having been founded by the Apostles themselves.”
(n. 16) “…the Sacred Council… declares that the Churches of the East have the right and the duty to govern themselves according to their discipline” with “they have ‘the faculty’ to govern themselves according to their discipline.”
(n. 21) “…moved by the Holy Spirit they find God in the same Holy Scripture” with “’Calling upon’ the Holy Spirit, they ‘seek God’ in the same Holy Scripture.”
SUMMARY: Benedict’s “real Church of the Documents” rather than the “virtual Church” of Hans Kung and his sycophants.
As a matter of devout Catholic faith I believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church instituted by Christ. When Jesus chose Peter as essentially the first Pope, He introduced a hierarchy which must be obeyed like junior officers obey a commanding general. Questioning in good conscience whether the commander is in error is allowed, disobedience is not allowed, particularly when there is no reason to believe the Holy Spirit has chosen you, instead of the Pope and college of cardinals to follow God’s direction. The SSPX have allowed the source of all sin to lead them astray, a lack of humility.
Thank you Mr Calabrese. Lot of anti-Rome and pro-SSPX sentiment on this page, so it’s nice to see someone who believes in sticking with the Pope of Rome and the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
“….particularly when there is no reason to believe the Holy Spirit has chosen you, instead of the Pope and college of cardinals to follow God’s direction.
No reason???? Even when the college of cardinals violate Canon law in their electoral process for a pope?? Even when popes demand fidelity to heresies???
Nope. The SSPX quite correctly recognizes the imperatives of Christ to defend His Church in all contingencies, including malice in the episcopate.
Ron, you therefore believe that Fidicuia Supplicans is inspired – along with Rev James Martin – and in opposition with the majority of bishops of Africa. The Catholic Church transcended 2000 years in order finally to promote the sin of Sodom and Ghomorrah…
About new novelties being “inspired,” it was the Council itelf (rejected by SSPX) that clarified this error: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation [paradigm shift?] before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Lumen Gentium).
Three points:
FIRST, the toxic Fiducia Supplicans tried to invent a middle ground where homosexual “couples” might be semi-blessed in a manner that is “non-liturgical, spontaneous, and not scandalous.” Fernandez’s double-speak in action! (Likewise, photo-ops for Jimmy Martin and the enabling double meaning of “time is greater than space.”)
SECOND, from Africa, the lights were turned on by ALL of the African cardinals, plus the additional hierarchies of Hungary, Poland, Kazakhstan, Peru, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and parts of Argentina, Spain and France.
Now, about the maligned (in this thread) Cardinal Muller, as the former Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith (and dismissed by Francis), his astute conclusion was that “grave defects” in Fiducia Supplicans were clever enough to not yet be a heresy or schism, but that they would lead to heresy https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/02/does-fiducia-supplicans-affirm-heresy
THIRD, …As is now the predictable case with Germania which, on July I, will cross the Rubicon and fully institute liturgical blessings of the homosexual lifestyle, one “couple” at a time.
That the kissing-cardinal Fernandez was the one to deliver the clear message of “excommunication” is an artful and wise move on the part of Pope Leo XIV—the message is decisive but not divisive, and yet is delivered by the lead instigator, rather than by newcomer Leo. Who then would be dragged through the public square as a vindictive and reactionary conservative (one of Francis’s “backwardist, rigid, bigots”) and as the one responsible for formally and historically splitting the (Anglican-style!) Catholic Church.
Leo is navigating a minefield not of his making. We don’t need a self-crippled and lame-duck pope for the next twenty years.
Well said. Thank you.
Sure, Jesus chose Peter. The Bible tells us so. But nowhere, no way can you prove that Jesus or the Holy Spirit chose Leo.
As an opinion it seems that the notion of a false Church, mentioned by several existing alongside the true Church doesn’t refer to an independent, likely to become schismatic entity similar to the SSPX.
Rather, the prominent descriptions one by St Francis, which has been debunked by the Franciscan Order, are venerable Archbishop Sheen, Blessed Catherine Emmerich, and Saint John Henry Newman. Their warnings envisioned a false Church within the true Church. Newman referred to a false universal unity that mitigated absolute dogma. Though all of this is speculation until proved to be otherwise.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller accents the papacy instituted by Christ as the pivot for doctrinal certitude. Infallibility is a given, a divine gift. Although, can that be challenged indirectly by policies permitted to flourish that undermine doctrine, for example Synodality? Whatever may occur, or may be occurring we are promised that the baseline truths of the faith contained in the deposit of faith will be preserved.
Cardinal Müller criticizes ‘traditionalists’, referring to those who refuse to acknowledge valid development. Nonetheless those of us who love Christ, and our brother or sister can be assured of the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Benedict’s hermeneutic of continuity with Christ’s words as revealed and conveyed by the Apostles.
Additionally, I drew in Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s defense of leniency for the SSPX. The Bishop presents a compelling argument in defense compared to Cardinal Müller’s criticism that acceptance of SSPX request for approbation to ordain bishops would create a Church with varied doctrinal views.
That defense of the Vatican’s position must nevertheless be understood in context of the German Synodal Way, which is totally out of line with Catholic orthodoxy. Müller doesn’t sufficiently explain the canonical efficacy of the German Church that continues to ordain bishops who are more Protestant than Catholic.
It gives the sense that Rome, in respect to the SSPX, is seeking to show it still has muscle. Furthermore, I criticized Leo XIV’s unwillingness to meet with SSPX Superior General Father Davide Pagliarani.
Why wouldn’t the Roman pontiff seize the opportunity to be a pastoral father with his wayward sheep? Why instead refer him to his morally questionable henchman Cardinal Victor Fernández? It speaks to a purposeful desire to force the SSPX outside of the Church’s canonical boundaries. And it speaks to the intent of never returning to the orthodoxy that the SSPX represents.
“Church with varied doctrinal views.”
>Reinhard Marx has entered the chat
>Mark Seitz has entered the chat
>James Martin has entered the chat
>John Stowe has entered the chat
Müller’s assessment is more imaginative than technically correct as you suggest.
I should have been more assertive and less suggestive.
on this paragraph:
“Why wouldn’t the Roman pontiff seize the opportunity to be a pastoral father with his wayward sheep? Why instead refer him to his morally questionable henchman Cardinal Victor Fernández? It speaks to a purposeful desire to force the SSPX outside of the Church’s canonical boundaries. And it speaks to the intent of never returning to the orthodoxy that the SSPX represents.”
There is a stunning irony in that failure. Leo had no problem meeting with that miserable cosplay witch from Canterbury, affording her an equivalence she does not merit. After the meeting, she of course took it upon herself to use the spotlight Leo handed her to complain about the refusal to ordain women.
I approach this topic as a convert, without the historical perspective that shapes how others might value or critique Vatican II. When I read its documents and reflect on their significance, I start by asking: what was the need for Vatican II? I haven’t yet found an answer that resonates with me. I then consider its fruits, but I see a holy Church deeply wounded by the loss of priests and others in Holy Orders who abandoned their calling, and pews that became newly vacant. It’s often said that many of those who remained ignored the documents and simply did whatever they wished. This openness to such broad interpretations of Vatican II seems to have clouded and nearly erased its greatest intended achievements. As a convert, I’ve clung to the belief that this Holy Church is the one founded by Jesus Christ, with an unbroken line of authority from Peter to today. Father, guide me in the steps your Son has taken. Keep me from the confusion of the Evil One. May the Holy Spirit surround me, humble me to accept what I do not yet know or understand, and lead me to follow you and your Holy Church with eagerness.
Can you imagine, as a non-Catholic, the bewilderment of attending Mass for the first time; and in Latin.
And is that the fault of the Mass, no matter what language it is celebrated in or the people that made the Mass a “service”?
If your contention is that Mass in the vernacular reduces the “bewilderment” of first time attendees, has it resulted in a wholesale return of Protestants? No, not really and it certainly hasn’t stopped cradle Catholics from leaving in droves.
I felt that way Miss Margaret at my first TLM .
It took a little while to figure out even following along in the missal but valuable things can take some time and effort to understand. I think it was worth it.
🙂
Yes, I can imagine! I also imagine the bewilderment as the better part of a marvelous, miraculous, and astounding spiral of dizziness attendant to an immense and nameless (because not understood) Peace.
For reference, see Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” in Rome.
https://sophiainstitute.com/promo/discovering-the-latin-mass/
Free ebook for those venturing to real deal latin mass for the first time 😉
Thank you to the commentators for the reasoned, non-dogmatic critiques. I have learned much here. I found an excellent article in a very good site that presents the critical and enlightening views on the subject by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. The link is
https://dianemontagna.substack.com/p/exclusive-bishop-schneider-sets-out
Here are some excerpts:
Titled The Core Question Regarding the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X and published in full below, the document is structured around five principal arguments and asks several key questions, including:
• Why is the SSPX’s unconditional acceptance of the texts of Vatican II being presented as a conditio sine qua non for full communion with the Holy See, while no comparable requirement exists with respect to the pastoral, disciplinary, or non-definitive teachings of the preceding twenty Ecumenical Councils?
• Why should reconciliation and patient dialogue be emphasized in the case of the German Bishops but not in the case of the SSPX?
Bishop Schneider said he is publishing this text because discussions of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the planned episcopal consecrations have largely remained on the surface, particularly among traditionally minded clergy and faithful, without addressing what he considers the fundamental issues involved.
He argues that the central question concerns doctrinal ambiguities stemming from the Second Vatican Council and their harmful and widespread effects in the life of the Church over the past sixty years, including the rise of doctrinal relativism. He also maintains that unresolved doctrinal ambiguities remain in the Novus Ordo Missae.
“Neither so-called progressivism, which surrenders the revealed truth of Christ to the shifting currents of the zeitgeist, nor traditionalism, which reduces the entire tradition of the Church to a few fixed ideas”
The entire patrimony of the Church are “a few fixed ideas.”
So much for the fair and balanced objetivity of Cdl. Mueller.
There is much as attendees of the Novus Ordo we can do to set an example to our fellow ‘tradiomalist’ Catholics. Herewith a few examples:
A return to our beautiful hymns
Improve our dress code
Our bishops and priests need to speak out about important
issues like abortion, IVF, the gender ideology and on and on…..
The need for regular Comfession. Indeed why would anyone attend Confession when they have no idea of sin.
As a regular Ordinary Form Catholic, it’s part of the ethos that we don’t “perform” our Catholicism for others’ observation or example.
That’s a comment from someone hung up on externals. Have you ever considered Gerard that deep reference leads to externalised piety which has traditionally been a source of inspiration?
An ethos which prides itself in not appearing Catholic is of the devil.
Read “deep reverence”.
And the reverse is true. External piety leads the individual to internal reverence: Coherence between gesture and disposition.
Ok you got me.
Imagine me at sea lost with no float and managing to keep buoyed miraculously not tiring, I would then have to separate gesture and disposition to make both remain coherent. And maintain hope that God expects my enrapture anytime.
What’s the problem with the ordinations? Why not approvie them? Are the men unworthy? Allow them to have their bishops while seeking unification. Waiting for them to die out is not the answer.
Let me just explain my situation as a mere Catholic member of the laity trying to live the faith. I cannot continue in Synodal church. My Lord has given me the method to discern false teaching and avoid wolves. Do I hear a different gospel from what He taught? Definitely. Do I hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the current leaders? I do not. Are the words and actions of the clergy/pope consistent with what was held before? In almost no way.
For my eternal salvation and mental health, our family cannot continue in the lifetime practice of our faith in the new, Synodal church. We reject it in entirety, even as we know geographic distance may mean we cannot attend the SSPX regularly. We are grateful to the SSPX for the July 1 consecrations. The Synodal church in our opinion, is frankly apostate and evil.
Let me just explain my situation as a mere Catholic member of the laity trying to live the faith. I cannot continue in Synodal church. My Lord has given me the method to discern false teaching and avoid wolves. Do I hear a different gospel from what He taught? Definitely. Do I hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the current leaders? I do not. Are the words and actions of the clergy/pope consistent with what was held before? In almost no way.
For my eternal salvation and mental health, our family cannot continue in the lifetime practice of our faith in the new, Synodal church. We reject it in entirety, even as we know geographic distance may mean we cannot attend the SSPX regularly. We are grateful to the SSPX for the July 1 consecrations.
I will pray you find your way back home before you leave this life. Failure to submit your will to Christ’s Church is a terrible fate for your soul.
As I have said, the portended illicit SSPX consecrations by their very enacting, in the given circumstances of prior excommunicate, would simultaneously retrofit the earlier ban and make the purported consecration eo ipso void. It’s not merely that they are “illicit” in the typical sense.
The German bishops are doing regular consecration where Rome is remaining open to new entrants without pronouncing on latae sententiae.
Rome should as concerned over the one as with the other; however, it just happens to be the case that the two situations are distinct where SSPX has the particular unique disadvantage that it has no founder and no “SSPX” mission along with prior taint of direct legal/positive expulsion.
Why are trads getting themselves into that. “Not very intelligent”.
St Athanasius of Alexandria was formally condemned, deposed, and exiled multiple times during the Arian controversy.
There is no reason it should be otherwise for the SSPX during this Modernist controversy.
What I told meiron above, Elias Galy, June 11, 2026 at 2:03 pm – I had written in note form on a piece of paper 2 Sundays ago; and I am fresh out of ideas. I can’t say anything new, at least not right away now. I appreciate your considered answer.
May I commend out difficulties, our goodwill and our better selves, to the Virgin Mary Most Clement.
Muller comes to mind, here:
‘ One would hope that the FSSPX will not remain confined to its own circle, but instead look to the Church as a whole and learn from the mistakes of Church history. The Fraternity should not follow the path of the Donatists, the Jansenists, and the Old Catholics. One extreme does not justify the other.
Neither so-called progressivism, which surrenders the revealed truth of Christ to the shifting currents of the zeitgeist, nor traditionalism, which reduces the entire tradition of the Church to a few fixed ideas, can be the way of the Church that the Risen Lord has chosen as a sacrament, that is, as a sign and instrument. ‘
CN
St Athanasius was sent into exile several times by Roman emperors in his fight against the Arian heresy, but he never tried to reject or supersede the Roman Pontiff’s authority, nor perform invalid consecrations to the episcopate without papal approval. Comparing the great St Athanasius to the SSPX is laughably ridiculous.
There’s a difference between a canonized saint who fought a heresy and a non-canonical society who is waging a war against not only the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, but also against the very same Rome who declared Athanasius a saint to begin with.
“May God console you! … What saddens you … is the fact that others have occupied the Churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises — but you have the apostolic faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the faith? The true faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle — the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the faith?”
St Athanasius
I suggest DTS that what applied during the Arian Controversy, applies during the Modernist Controversy. PAX.
Again, CN, the True Faith is only found in any Catholic church that is in full communion with the Roman Pontiff and the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Not in the Orthdox Churches. Not in Lutheran or Anglican churches. And not in the SSPX. The Holy Spirit guides the Church and is indefectible. It will last until the end of time.
You and I will probably disagree with this indisputable fact, but the fact remains that no matter what, nothing good will come from rejecting the Roman Pontiff in favor of a schismatic sect of illicit priests and bishops.
God bless ☦️
Yes, saying that Athanasius didn’t defy his pope by ordaining bishops is laughable. Only in the Middle Ages did papal approval of consecration of bishops begin to be customary. At the time of Athanasius, bishops were typically elected by local clergy. Regional bishops typically approved the clerical choices. Only for bishops of the larger metropolitans was the Bishop of Rome consulted. Such approval/selection procedures were not codified in canon law until 1917.
Did you know that JPII (as Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow), ordained men to the priesthood in defiance of papal approval? Archbishop Wojtyla disregarded Pope Paul VI’s Ostpolitik policy, which forbid bishops from ordaining new priests. I believe that Wojtyla justified his action on the basis of crisis and/or necessity. And that is the same or similar excuse given by the SSPX bishop.
Finally, the entire Society is not defying papal approval. Only the bishop seeking to consecrate bishops is doing that.
Not as laughable as comparing a saint to an illicit sect of bishops and priests.
St JPII, as Bishop Wojtyla, did that in the underground church, but not because he desired to reject the papacy and operate on his own terms, but because of widespread communism and the inability to contact Rome for formal authorization.
Also, unlike the illicit bishop of the SSPX, Wojtyla had canonical standing in the Catholic Church as a bishop in an authorized Archdiocese. He wasn’t in charge of a separate group of illicit priests.
The SSPX is doing it blatantly without papal approval, and for no reason other than attempting to supersede the Roman Pontiff’s authority.
It’s tough and frustrating sometimes with what comes out of the Vatican. But we can’t leave the Barque of Peter for the SSPX. The price is too costly. I wouldn’t trade being in union with Rome for anything.
How I would put it, the people expressed their desire over this or that individual for bishop, which is a process that still is freely engaged to this day; then the Church, if acquiescing, would ordain him. Yet, the Church is free to choose an alternative. Sometimes the “recommendation” from the people comes through as unanimous, Athanasius being one such -here is a major distinction concerning SSPX.
I think it is crucial to bear in mind that the Arian controversy was a battle over doctrinal specifics. This is not what we are faced with in our contemporary context. It would be great to be a a defender of faith on such a basis comparable to such a personage, but at this moment it is not quite like that. Using the SSPX situation as one type of reference, SSPX is altogether refusing to engage doctrinal affirmation, to begin with, of the Council.
Immediately then with the SSPX, one has to question Lefebvre’s candidness in never having rejected the Council: SSPX is telling a different story about intentions. This is a different issue than the Arian controversy.
During his second exile Athanasius was delaying to be readmitted to the communion, meaning he was also avoiding ordaining. His consistent example is, a deep concern over who is taking him back and on what terms, precisely in order to protect doctrinal purity. And during his multiple exiles he always sought the company of orthodox. Then, in his attempts as legitimate errant bishops and others during those times when he was restored, his reconciling formulas were framed prudently. As it went just before his fourth exile –
‘ In 362 Athanasius convened a council at Alexandria and presided over it with Eusebius of Vercelli. Athanasius appealed for unity among all those who had faith in Christianity, even if they differed on matters of terminology. This prepared the groundwork for his definition of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.
However, the council also was directed against those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the human soul of Christ, and Christ’s divinity. Mild measures were agreed on for those heretic bishops who repented, but severe penance was decreed for the chief leaders of the major heresies. ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria
EDIT re: Elias Galy, June 15, 2026 at 5:14 am
4th para second-to-last sentence – ‘ … in his attempts TO legitimate errant bishops … ‘ , i.e. not “at”
In addition to Cardinal Muller, three other prelates have offered a range of separate perspectives on the SSPX (reported in “Inside the Vatican,” May-June 2026, pp. 12-13). Here’s a sketch…
Cardinal MULLER urges the SSPX “to turn away from the wrong path of distancing themselves from the Church and their self-isolation among like-minded people and to entrust themselves with confidence to the guidance of the Successor of Peter, to whom the Lord of the Church has personally entrusted the dare of his flock.”
Cardinal SARAH concludes “To leave the Barque of Peter and to organize oneself autonomously, in a closed circle like a sect, is to deliver oneself to the waves of the storm.”
Cardinal BRANDMULLER: “Both sides should impartially study chapter II of the conciliar constitution ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’ and evaluate the subsequent developments in it light. It would become clear how far post-conciliar practice has strayed from the constitution, which, it should not be forgotten, was also endorsed by Archbishop Lefebvre. (Brandmuller was among the four who signed the first dubia of 2016; he and Sarah were among the five who signed the second dubia of 2023.)
And, Bishop SCHNEIDER proposes, “the Church’s practice and understanding during the time of the Church Fathers, and for a long period thereafter, argue against this view [that ‘consecration carried out without the consent, or even against a papal prohibition, constitutes in itself a schismatic act’]…According to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, an episcopal consecration carried out against the will of the Pope was punished not with excommunication, but only with suspension. By this, the Church clearly manifested that she did not consider such an act to be schismatic.[….]”
The inseparable factor is that SSPX rejects the Council outright, such that the ordinations are more of a lightning rod. Meanwhile the lightning rod in Germania is the liturgical celebration of the homosexual lifestyle, one “couple” at a time. And, concurrently, we have the renewal–or not–of the secret Provisional Agreement with Gengis Khan.
Elias, Peter, we agree I think – at least from reading you across CWR – that there IS a very real modernist controversy.
SSPX is the only response Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre could find to the drama which was then unfolding. Now 50 years later in 2026 Fiducia Supplicans promotes sin that cries vegeance, and is followed up by an outright assault on our blessed mother. All this from a porn-writing head of a New Church Dicastery for the Deconstruction of the Faith…
There IS a very real Modernist Controversy underway in the Church. Thus far, SSPX has been the only reasonable response to the necessity of saving the family silver.
Who can blame them from not trusting the wolves with that family silver?
Pax.
Were all the bishops of the Catholic Church rounded up and shot would that signal the end of the priesthood, or would some mechanism be employed to create new bishops?
The Lefebvre case and its subsequent manifestation is fundamentally a matter of disobedience to the centre.
The conceit here is that the centre is always on message.
Church history indicates that that has not always been the case.
With news that a senior Catholic prelate in the USA attended the inauguration of a Muslim religious complex and seemingly felt at home there one might be given to ponder what exactly counts as «disobedience», «schism», «heresy».
Canon lawyers may point to textual sources but we live in the real world.