by Côme de Prévigny*
It has been repeated with evident satisfaction over the past few days: "The matter is settled. The schism is consummated. There is nothing more to expect from the SSPX." Very well. Granted. We should have turned the page by now. And yet the file stubbornly refuses to close and continues to occupy a prominent place in the news.
The extraordinary shockwave that has shaken social media and Catholic circles reveals, on the contrary, an affair far from resolved. Episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate take place dozens of times each year — in China, in Mexico, in the United States — without the Holy See reacting with anything approaching this level of vigor. Why the exception here?
1. A Welcome Applied Selectively
If the break is total and the Society definitively out of the picture, why is it not being given the same treatment reserved for other separated communities? Anglican bishops such as Sarah Mullaly, and scores of Protestant pastors, are received with courtesy, cordial dialogue, and media-friendly smiles. The SSPX, by contrast, remains the one body treated as an untouchable pariah. If it is truly "outside" the Church, then let it be accorded the diplomacy extended to those who have genuinely left: red carpets, exchanges of gifts, and florid communiqués. None of that is being offered. This targeted severity invites scrutiny.
2. An Unprecedented Sanction
In recent days, bishops have been issuing communiqués in rapid succession, and the Holy See has formulated a condemnation of unusual intensity — one touching all the faithful, a development without real precedent in a very long time. The threat of imminent danger is being brandished. And yet, according to the Society's own critics, the SSPX is nothing more than a small group of arrogant dissidents, a marginal backwater: supposedly more dangerous than open doctrinal deviations, more dangerous than the widespread abandonment of religious practice, more dangerous than public heresies, more dangerous even than certain grave moral scandals whose perpetrators are no longer sanctioned with anything approaching this degree of intensity. If the Society is so insignificant and so harmful, why such fear of the attraction it might exert on the faithful? Has the holy People of God lost all capacity for discernment? The contradiction is glaring: this organization is portrayed as a monster, while its opponents act as though that monster exercises an irresistible pull.
3. A Disproportionate Media Frenzy
Hostile commentators have canceled their vacations. Videos, op-eds, analyses, and public statements have been arriving in rapid succession. On X, priests are speaking of almost nothing else, sometimes replacing their Sunday preaching with impassioned admonitions. And yet, if one is to believe these same critics, the SSPX is merely an insignificant fringe group — practically a sect on the verge of extinction. So why this disproportionate relentlessness? Why this feverish mobilization over a handful of priests and faithful who, we are told, amount to nothing? Does it really require this expenditure of energy to deal with a few unhinged sheep?
Could this not be, at bottom, a diversion? A way of numbing oneself in an internal ecclesiastical controversy rather than confronting reality: the advance of radical Islam in Europe, the spread of wokism, the generalized moral and cultural degradation, or the imminent vote on euthanasia in France?
The SSPX thus becomes, despite itself, a sign of contradiction. Not out of any desire to provoke, but because everything said against it ends up contradicting itself. It lays bare the incoherences, the fears, and the blind spots of its adversaries. Through their extraordinary mobilization and their passionate interest, those adversaries are paying the Society, entirely against their will, a resounding tribute. These troubled days are forcing questions that many would prefer to avoid. The desperate appeals of Cardinals Müller and Koch, and of Bishop Bux, are proof enough of this. And that, perhaps more than anything else, is what disturbs people most.
* Pen name of a French-language writer who has written extensively for Rorate in the past
