VATICAN CITY (AP) 鈥� The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope鈥檚 consent, declaring the 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鈥檚 doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church鈥檚 canon law to respond to 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 harshness of the response suggested that after trying to negotiate with the SSPX, the Vatican under had had enough.
Vatican decree targeted bishops and faithful
In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two existing SSPX bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a 鈥渟chismatic act鈥� and that the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the church.
It declared SSPX priests 鈥� who number about 750 鈥� to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer. The Vatican warned the faithful to stop going to SSPX Masses, decreeing that 鈥渢hose who adhere formally鈥� to the society are schismatic and excommunicated.
The Vatican said that applied to people who are members of the SSPX lay branch and those who 鈥渞egularly attend鈥� SSPX Masses and formally share its doctrinal positions. The sanctions don’t apply to Catholic faithful who attend SSPX Masses “just for liturgical or spiritual reasons” or those who go but accept the pope’s authority and teaching.
The SSPX doesn’t have an exact count but estimates around 400,000-600,000 people attend its Masses, meaning Thursday’s decree could potentially involve the excommunications of thousands of rank-and-file SSPX faithful.
The sanctions, especially those targeting the priests, the faithful and the sacraments they can receive, were particularly harsh and reversed concessions the Vatican had granted the SSPX in recent years as part of its outreach to bring the group back under Rome’s wing.
Marc-Andr茅 Mabillard, media manager for the society, expressed shock at the severity of the sanctions and called them 鈥渦njust.”
鈥淔or us, this excommunication extended to the faithful is brutal. It鈥檚 not what we expect from a father to whom we refer every day,鈥� he told The Associated Press. 鈥淲e are told, 鈥榊ou claim to have the truth.鈥� Fine. I鈥檓 just saying that we certainly have our flaws, but our main flaw today is having a leader who doesn鈥檛 want to communicate with us. And that鈥檚 terrible.鈥�
The Vatican’s doctrine chief, Cardinal V铆ctor Manuel Fern谩ndez, met in February with the SSPX superior, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, and proposed a dialogue. But Pagliarani asked instead to meet with Leo, who declined but wrote a letter Tuesday to call off the consecrations.
The group’s founders opposed reforms
French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the SSPX in 1970 in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s meetings known as Vatican II revolutionized the church鈥檚 relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.
Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent in 1988. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four bishops and declared the consecrations a 鈥渟chismatic act.鈥�
Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications as part of his yearslong outreach to the group. But the SSPX today has no legal standing in the church and with Thursday鈥檚 decree is declared to be in schism.
The consecrations had posed a crisis for Leo because the American pope has stressed the need for church unity. He has reached out especially to the conservative and traditionalist wing of the church that was in many ways alienated during the Pope Francis pontificate.
The Vatican responded so aggressively in part because the group poses something of a threat by representing a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church that has grown in the decades since its original break from Rome. While representing a fraction of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic faithful, the SSPX now has six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
A key Vatican II document rejected by the SSPX is one that, among other things, deplored antisemitism in every form and repudiated the 鈥渄eicide鈥� charge that blamed Jews as a people for Christ鈥檚 death. The Vatican crafted the document as the church reckoned with the role traditional Christian teaching had played in the Holocaust.
The SSPX today says it rejects accusations that it ever taught or practiced antisemitism, and the SSPX distanced itself from one of the original 1988 bishops, the late Bishop Richard Williamson, when he denied the Holocaust.
Traditionalists in communion with Rome respond
In a note accompanying the decree, the Vatican said it was willing, 鈥渓ike a caring mother,鈥� to welcome any SSPX faithful back into the fold. It laid out specific procedures for SSPX priests and faithful, by signing two forms professing the faith, promising fidelity to the pope and accepting the core teaching of Vatican II.
While the SSPX is out of communion with Rome, plenty of other Catholic traditionalists who love the Latin Mass remain in communion with the Holy See. They had been watching carefully to see how Leo’s Vatican would respond to the SSPX consecrations and were surprised by the harshness of Thursday’s sanctions.
鈥淗e鈥檚 brought the hammer down,鈥� said Joseph Shaw, head of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which is in communion. Shaw expressed sympathy with the plight of ordinary SSPX faithful, saying the invalidation of marriages especially is going to cause 鈥渕assive鈥� pastoral problems. 鈥淚t’s a sad day.”
Luigi Casalini, of the blog Messa in Latino, meaning Latin Mass, said the excommunication of the bishops was correct because canon law provides for it. But the extension of the excommunications to SSPX priests and faithful was 鈥渁n act of unusual severity,鈥� he said, while saying the invalidation of SSPX sacraments was problematic.
One of the thousands of worshippers at Wednesday鈥檚 consecrations was Allison Isermann, a 24-year-old from St. Marys, Kansas, a small town with a large SSPX church. She grew up as a society member and strongly defended its teaching in opposition to Vatican II, specifically its openness to those of other faiths.
鈥淚t is actually very anti-Catholic and anti-charitable to affirm others and their beliefs when it is our duty and our mission to actually convert and sanctify the world and to restore all things in Christ,鈥� she said.
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Keaten contributed from Geneva.
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