SSPX Has Been Excommunicated, again…

As an ecclesial historian who has studied heresy, schism and the councils of the Church extensively, I applaud Pope Leo XIV for declaring the Society of Saint Pius X as schismatic, again.

From the very beginning of the movement, when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (d. 1991) signed the documents of the Second Vatican Council, only to rebel later against certain teachings he considered too modern, he and those who follow him have been no less schismatic than Novatian during the time of St. Cyprian of Carthage and Pope Cornelius.  Like Novatian, Lefebvre began to act like a pope by unlawfully ordaining his own priests and consecrating his own bishops.  And like Novatian, he never repented and reconciled with the one and Holy Catholic Church.

Some of you may not know the history of the movement, and I will not go into depth here, but essentially there were a group of men within the Church who formed a society in 1970 in rebellion against certain tenants adopted at the Council (1962-65), tenants they believed diluted the Catholic faith, including the replacement of Latin as the sole lingua franca of the Church’s liturgy with the vernacular of the people she serves.  

Back and forth Rome and SSPX went, sometimes getting closer to reunion and sometimes farther apart, but SSPX would not recognize Vatican II.  As for Rome, she bent over backwards offering an olive branch in hope of reconciliation, in the same way Cyprian and Cornelius did the Novatianists, but the stubbornness of SSPX only persisted and grew stronger and now there are generations of parishioners who have been led astray.  Rome settled the Novatian issue fairly quickly, but the Vatican governed under Pope John Paul II, who, in 1988 appeased some Latin traditionalists by authorizing an SSPX break-away group (FSSP) the right to use the pre-Vatican II Roman Rite (Tridentine Mass), and Pope Benedict XVI who lifted the excommunication of four SSPX bishops (in hopes of reunification in 2009) did nothing to bring SSPX back into union with the Church.  There was never a true quid pro quo; Rome gave and SSPX took.   

Enough is enough.

The modernizing of the Second Vatican Council, so highly criticized by SSPX, was not about theological modernism; it had no impact on the dogmatic truths of the Church, something which cannot be said for those Catholic theologians and modernists - Alfred Loisey and George Tyrell – who attempted to change dogma a century ago.  Vatican II opened the door for the people it serves to hear the liturgy in their own language.  I understand that many people miss the Latin liturgy, but Latin is not the language of God.   It’s use only became universal (in the West) after the Roman Empire legally recognized Christianity; it was a practical outcome, if anything.  But historically speaking, Latin is not the traditional language of the Church; Greek is. Even our term “Liturgy” comes from the Greek leitourgia, meaning “work done on behalf of the people.”  The entire New Testament, except for Matthew’s Gospel, was written in the people’s language of Koine Greek, and the foundational theologians of the early Church wrote in Greek, including Saints Polycarp, Irenaeus, Athanasias, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Naziansus, Cyril and Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom.  If the Church should have adopted any language as a fixed universal, Greek was a natural contender, yet that did not happen (and that is OKAY).  Yet to insist on Latin exclusively, as SSPX does, is nothing more than putting a human tradition ahead of the divine Body of Christ.  Schism is rebellion, and one part of the body cannot declare itself free of the rest for the “eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”    

SSPX separating from the Church is like the man who separates from his wife because after 30 years of “traditionally” scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees she decides to upgrade to a mop and bucket.

Pray for those who have been unduly influenced by the acts of SSPX that they may see the light of truth, repent, confess and return to the one and Holy Catholic Church.