On September 14, Vatican officials met with the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics, to present a proposal for the group’s full reunification with the Church. If successful, the pope will have healed a serious division within the Church and brought one million energized Catholics back into the fold.
In the disastrous years following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), millions of western Catholics abandoned the practice of their faith. Some prominent bishops and priests openly dissented from Church teaching while the sexual revolution wreaked havoc on traditional morality.
In 1970, a French archbishop named Marcel LeFebvre formed a group of priests called the Society of St. Pius X. Named after the fiercely anti-liberal pope who reigned from 1903 to 1914, its goal was to preserve traditional Catholic teaching and practice. Its most notable feature was its adherence to the traditional form of the Mass in Latin.
LeFebvre’s group provided a haven to confused Catholics during this turmoil, and, as a result, his group now has more than 500 priests and hundreds of thousands of lay adherents the world over (estimates go as high as one million). In France, the SSPX’s followers comprise a significant percentage of the entire churchgoing population.
LeFebvre’s critiques of the modern Church, however, were not only directed against dissent from the Church’s teaching by other priests and bishops. He also criticized the actual teachings of Vatican II, particularly those on ecumenism and religious liberty. This, and his society’s refusal to offer the modern Mass, put his group at odds with Pope Paul VI, and later with Bl. John Paul II.
In 1986, John Paul II participated in a meeting of world religious leaders at Assisi. During this event, pictures were released of Buddhists and pagan animists using a Catholic sanctuary for their worship. It is unlikely the pope knew or approved of this activity, but the Vatican did not make any statement distancing itself from what happened. The nature of the photos shocked the SSPX and other faithful Catholics. Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) disapproved and ensured that such things never happened at subsequent papal interfaith gatherings.
Deeply scandalized by Assisi and jaded with the modern Church in general, LeFebvre responded in 1988 by consecrating 4 bishops against the pope’s express command. LeFebvre was so horrified by the pope’s actions, and thought that the pope and bishops had so abandoned traditional Catholicism, that he needed to preserve an authentically Catholic line of bishops for providing the Sacraments.
The Vatican declared that LeFebvre and his 4 new bishops incurred automatic excommunication for this schismatic act. Cardinal Ratzinger was heavily involved in the negotiations between Rome and the SSPX.
LeFebvre lost significant conservative support at this juncture. Led by Ratzinger, many faithful Catholics hold that LeFebvre’s views on the council were the same as the leftist viewpoint: Both the SSPX and the left viewed the council as a complete departure from traditional Catholicism. Ratzinger disagreed, holding that there was no rupture in the essential teaching and that the more controversial statements of the council needed to be interpreted in continuity with prior Catholic teaching.
Furthermore, most conservatives, and even some of LeFebvre’s own priests, could not condone LeFebvre’s consecration of bishops, a serious violation of Church law that brought about a grave rift. LeFebvre would die out of communion with the Church three years later.
Ratzinger’s election to the throne of Peter in 2005 brought renewed hope for reconciliation between the Church and the SSPX. Pope Benedict promptly removed several obstacles to the SSPX’s reintegration by giving universal permission for the traditional Mass and by withdrawing the excommunications from the SSPX’s bishops.
The disagreements on the council remain. Since 2009, theologians from the Holy See and the SSPX have met to discuss the positions of both sides on disputed doctrinal positions.
On September 14, the Holy See gave the SSPX a document of theological points that are prerequisites for reconciliation. It is uncertain what exactly the document contains, but most observers think it will give the SSPX leeway to debate and to discuss content from Vatican II with which they disagree in a constructive fashion.
The Holy See now awaits the SSPX’s response. It would be one of the major accomplishments of Benedict’s papacy to bring these hundreds of thousands of Catholics back into communion with the Church, as they could instantly help revitalize the weak Catholic identity of many Western European countries, particularly France. The Vatican may also afford the SSPX an independent canonical structure to allow them more freedom and protect them from the liberal bishops they loathe.
While reconciliation is hoped for, the Church is exposing itself to certain risks by making this offer. Benedict has already suffered negative publicity for removing the excommunications from the SSPX bishops, since one of them was later discovered to be a Holocaust denier. Having been entrenched in an “anti-establishment” position for so long, the reintegration process for the society’s more radical priests could prove difficult.
Furthermore, there is a significant chance that not all of the SSPX will return to the Church even if their leadership agrees to the Vatican’s offer. Most critically, if any of the 4 SSPX bishops do not agree to the offer, the holdout bishop or bishops will likely consecrate more bishops, thereby perpetuating a schism.
If successful, Benedict will show himself to be the greatest unifier in recent Church history; if unsuccessful, a schism will be perpetuated indefinitely. Whatever the outcome, the next few months will be a historic time for the Church.
John Gerardi is a 2L at Notre Dame Law School. He is looking for jobs in Minnesota, California, D.C., or South Bend. Email him with job opportunities at jgerardi@nd.edu.
