https://www.nbcnews.com/world/the-vatican/vatican-declares-society-st-pius-x-schism-excommunicates-bishops-inval-rcna352691
Vatican declares ultraconservative society in schism, excommunicates bishops and warns faithful
The Vatican’s doctrine office went beyond the minimal sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations of four new bishops at the society’s Econe, Switzerland, seminary.
The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist society that consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicating its bishops and priests and warning its faithful they too face the harshest sanctions in the Catholic Church.
The Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops at the society’s Econe, Switzerland, seminary.
The society, known by its initialism 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.
During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday, attended by some 15,500 people and their children, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV, who had urged the SSPX to hold off for the sake of the church’s unity.
In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a “schismatic act” and declared the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the Catholic Church.
The Vatican warned the faithful who go to the society’s Masses to stop, declaring “those who adhere formally” to the society are considered themselves schismatic and excommunicated. It declared SSPX priests to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer.
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.
The harshness of the response suggested that after nearly five decades of trying to negotiate with the SSPX, the Holy See has had enough.
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’s 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 “schismatic act.”
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’s 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.
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https://www.ft.com/content/6b6caf0c-4c17-4612-a8cc-67c376b4bd70?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Vatican schism puts Maga Catholics under pressure
