The SSPX’s recent pilgrimage to Rome has been the cause of some media attention not least because of mounting expectations regarding future Episcopal Consecrations. The inevitable skeletons have come out of the cupboard again alongside those who claim to have insight into just about everything Archbishop Lefebvre did or didn’t do. However, whilst the future consecrations remain a vitally important and pressing issue, what has been overlooked is how the Society of St Pius X is meeting its own future and how she is handing down her “management” to a new generation.
The official SSPX Roman Jubilee pilgrimage took place August 19-21. It included a procession to St Mary Major, Solemn High Mass in the Colle Oppio Park celebrated by the Superior General of the Society Fr Pagliariani (watch here), a procession to St John Lateran, and on the final day, a procession to St Peters where the Jubilee Prayers were recited.
Some 8000 pilgrims took part in the event alongside more than 600 clergy and religious. I myself was one of those pilgrims. Over the years, I have been to many events in Rome including Papal audiences and even lived there for a short while, but never have I witnessed so much joy and enthusiasm in the Eternal City, filled with the visible witness of priests and faithful alike to Catholic Tradition. There was a palpable air of Catholicity, as if clean oxygen had been breathed into troubled lungs.
I encountered numerous pilgrim groups on buses, spoke to a priest on the metro whose apostolate has quadrupled since covid, a youth group who had all been to the Society’s schools like myself, and priests whom I have known for many years, all with equally refreshing optimism and visible happiness. It was immensely moving to sing the Creed with a crowd so large, the Christus Vincit at full lung capacity and the Sancte Pie Decime!
What becomes overwhelmingly evident then, contrary to much popular press, is that the Society of St Pius X has a very definite future. For obvious reasons, the majority of pilgrims and priests were young in age. They represent but a small fraction of the faithful attached to the Society. Recently the French press estimated some 35,000 faithful attend the SSPX in France each Sunday which is a conservative figure. Whilst the last official figures of the Society date back to 2021, there are now over 700 priests and 200 seminarians, making them undeniably the largest religious order attached to the Traditional Latin Mass ahead of the FSSP, ICRSP and other “ex Ecclesia Dei” communities.
Unlike the aforementioned communities, one mark that distinguishes the Society is just how globally far-reaching she is. She has a seminary in Switzerland, one in America (whose seminarians all made it to Rome – no small organisational feat!), Germany, and Argentina. There were faithful and priests present in Rome from as far away as Mexico, Costa Rica, Japan and Canada, to name but a few corners of the world into which the missionary spirit of the Society has spread.
This zeal for souls is no surprise given the personal history of Archbishop and is one of the notable strengths of the Society. Looking ahead to the future, maintaining this global presence is of paramount importance given the growing threat to the Traditional Latin Mass from many quarters in the Church.
The missionary spirit and zeal for souls at the heart of the Society are a direct consequence of her identity which can be found in her full title: the Priestly Society of St Pius X. Above all, the aim of the Archbishop in founding the Society was and still is the formation of Catholic priests at a time when few were being formed with any doctrinal integrity at all. Doctrinal integrity is the fundamental pillar of the Society and the key to understanding the Crisis in the Church today which is firstly doctrinal a one leading to the destruction of the Traditional Mass because it embodies doctrinal perfection. This mission of priestly formation and a desire to hand on the Faith with doctrinal integrity has led the priests of the Society to take up a variety of apostolates from running four seminaries, many institutes of higher education, schools, priories and Mass Centres around the world.
This leads us to the central point of management.
In recent decades, the priests at the heart of decision making within the SSPX, her seminary rectors, district superiors and other senior leaders have now reached retirement age (although priests do not retire but rather take on less heavy pastoral duties). These were priests who for the vast majority were ordained by the Archbishop himself, and some had even known the Church in her pre-conciliar years or started religious life as diocesan seminarians. There are men who fought alongside the Archbishop, were thrown out of seminaries or parishes because of their love of the Traditional Mass and witnessed the Church slamming doors in their faces. They have been at the coalface of the fight for the survival of Tradition and are most deserving of a rest.
Thus, in recent years, the “management” of the SSPX has been handed down to younger priests, many of whom by pure chronology have neither known the Archbishop nor the coalface fight for Tradition of those earlier years. This begs the question: who are they and what kind of future does the Society hold?
To answer that question is to look closely at the structure of the Society. For many decades they have understood that to survive is to hand on. Unless the Faith is transmitted, it will die. Therefore, they have invested considerable human and financial resources into the running of schools throughout the world, one of which I had the privilege of attending in France, forming the next generation of priests, religious and families. This is one of the core strengths of the Society and unquestionably part of her identity: their unbeatably strong education in these troubled times. It is thus from this pool that the majority of their seminarians arise, and from that education that they are now stepping out in turn to take up the leadership positions of these very same schools, seminaries and institutions.
Critics of the Society are often keen to point out that the running of these apostolates and schools away from the “official” structure of the Church has led to a certain naivety and even a certain sectarian spirit which at times clouds their vision. Whilst it is true that this is a danger, and one that is sadly sometimes present, what was palpably true in Rome on the SSPX pilgrimage last week was that it is actually this preservation that has kept alive an integrity of Faith rarely found elsewhere. In other words, it is more salvific than negative. If it is true that some priests lack the exposure that their forebears had to the contemporary Church and her Curia and some even to the pastoral nature of running a parish in the twenty-first century, these are small negative prices to pay for retaining an overwhelmingly strong universal Catholic identity.
The same generational shift is also operative within the contemporary Church: most of the priests being ordained today were obviously not alive during the Second Vatican Council or even in its immediate aftermath, and many of the Bishops appointed certainly weren’t either. Thus, they do not possess some of the “hang ups” their predecessors did nor the over-enthusiastic embrace of the Council. Most of them, however, suffer from another issue: uprootedness. The aftermath of the barefaced brutality of the Council with Paul VI, the tentative attempt to smooth over the waters by John Paul II, to read the Council in continuity with Benedict XVI, and then a return to a solid decade of dictatorship under Francis have left the majority of clergy feeling unstable and in need of roots.
If there is a rise of interest in the Traditional Mass in spite of Traditionis Custodes, it is because it provides solid and true roots. It is these same roots that many of the laity sought and still seek in the wake of the global Covid pandemic, the same roots that brought 2,000 people to be baptised at the Easter Vigil this year in France, the same roots that took 27,000 pilgrims (and yes, I obviously include the Society in that number!) along the roads to Chartres. It is those same roots which the Society possess without compromise and has done now for decades. They provides the fruits that we saw yesterday and see today.
It is arguably true that for many decades the Society remained the only source of the Traditional Latin Mass and thus imposed a liturgical vision that became globalised and known as the “62 is what we do” attitude (although with some imports from pre-55). The bringing to the fore of the pre-Pian rites is one of the strengths of the “ex Ecclesia Dei” communities in recent years and has little to do with the “smells and bells” attitude and much more to do with continuity and heritage — i.e., the roots of the Church — although one can understand the need for uniformity within such a large religious community as the SSPX. One important and definite challenge for the Society will be to engage with how to implement and adopt some of the pre-Pian rites in the future (a valuable tool in so doing will be the new book Lumen Christi).
The SSPX, then, is not under “new management”; it is under continued strong leadership as a new generation takes up the reins from within. Continuity rather than rupture. For some old timers, there a sense of a loss of nostalgia as various figureheads step down, but the future is bright.
There is, however, a shift in dynamic and statistics within the Society of St Pius X as well as within the whole of the Traditional Catholic world: a nationality shift. The rise of Traditionalism was most notably French, not least because of the figure of the Archbishop but also on account of the faithful who fought for it. Whilst the French still remain the “coup de force” of Tradition and hold the highest number of priests, they are slowly being overtaken by the phenomenal growth of Tradition in America. This inevitably will take Tradition down a new and interesting but solid path as the decades continue. Watch this space.
As the inevitable question of the Episcopal Consecrations looms again on the horizon, there are many panic merchants on the march. Panic aside, what lessons have been learnt from the last 40 years?
The Traditionalist press has recently been abuzz with the idea of an Ordinariate for the Traditional Mass as a solution to Traditionis Custodes… that old chestnut! The Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England created by Benedict XVI started life with its own strong liturgical customs and approved identity. In the majority of parishes it currently runs in England today, most celebrate the Novus Ordo Missae with their own occasional specific liturgies. It seems rather an obvious trap! What happened to the idea of a Prelature that was promised to Archbishop Lefebvre? It only takes a quick Google search to see the undermining of Opus Dei by Francis… here we go again! The Order of Malta. Another example! The Franciscans of the Immaculate…and the list goes on!
With the exception of the Episcopal Consecration of Bishop Rifan in 2002 by Rome and the now marginalised Campos community, where are the Traditional Bishops promised by Rome to Archbishop Lefebvre? Nowhere! They are borrowed hither and thither by “ex Ecclesia Dei” communities with surprising ingenuity and support from sometimes unexpected quarters but most of the time it is the same old list of names we know too well: Bishop Schneider, Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Müller….
Alone for the last 40 years, the untiring example of the Bishops of the Society travelling the world to confirm and ordain shows the heroic dedication to which they have given their lives. Before anyone questions or analyses the state of necessity in which we find ourselves today perhaps more so than 40 years ago, take a look at the faces of these good men. They will teach you in silence the price of handing down the Faith and the Mass unhindered.
