[As always, guest pieces do not necessarily represent Rorate's position.]
Fr. Barré and the Roman policy towards the SSPX
by John Lamont
Fr. Clément Barré, of the Archdiocese of Toulouse, has criticized the ecclesiology of the SSPX in an article whose translation has been published by Rorate Caeli (The SSPX's Ecclesiology of Substitution: Part of the Whole, or a new Whole? — And the Problem with a Crisis that Never Ends).
Fr. Barré has qualifications in philosophy and theology, and is an occasional contributor to French Catholic publications such as La Croix. The article is intended to justify the position of the Holy See with respect to the Society. But its argument fails, and the Roman policy it defends is a bad one.
The thesis of the article, which Fr. Barré derives from Father Albert Jacquemin, is that 'the SSPX deploys a structured ecclesiology of substitution that establishes in principle a claim to replace the vital functions of the Church and justifies, in practice, acts as grave as the ordination of bishops without a pontifical mandate ... we employ here the term "ecclesiology of substitution" to designate not the explicit assertion of a parallel Church — which the SSPX repudiates — but a doctrinal construction in which a particular organization attributes to itself de facto the vital functions of the Church: the preservation of Tradition, the discernment of Roman fidelity, the formation of the clergy, and the transmission of the episcopate, on the grounds that the ordinary structures of the Church have become functionally deficient.'
To establish his thesis, Fr. Barré first gives a correct account of the position of the SSPX on Rome, and then draws false conclusions about the implications of this position for the ecclesiology allegedly held by the Society.
I. The SSPX on legitimate authority
He accurately describes Archbishop Lefebvre as holding that the current authority of Rome is legitimate only insofar as it coincides with the eternal Rome, and it forfeits that legitimacy when it departs from it.
This is why we hold firmly to all that has been believed and practiced in the Faith, morals, worship, teaching of the catechism, formation of the priest, and institution of the Church by the Church of all time, as codified in the books that appeared before the Modernist influence of the Council, while waiting for the true light of Tradition to dissipate the darkness that obscures the sky of the eternal Rome. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Declaration of November 21, 1974).
Fr. Barré comments: 'The expression "Church of all time" is decisive: the Church is not defined by its current institutional and hierarchical continuity, but by the permanence of a doctrinal and liturgical content.' 'In ordinary logic, resistance to Rome creates a contradiction: one cannot be fully Catholic while refusing obedience to the Pope. The SSPX resolves this contradiction by displacing it: it is Rome itself that is in internal contradiction. The faithful person who follows the eternal Rome by resisting the conciliar Rome does not act in disobedience — he acts in fidelity to a Rome that has betrayed itself.'
Fr. Barré asserts:
This is not a matter of distinguishing an invisible mystical Church, always pure, from a corrupted visible institution — which would be the sedevacantist or Protestant position. The SSPX fully acknowledges that Rome is and remains the Catholic Church, that the Pope is the Pope, that the sacraments are valid.
But it introduces a distinction of another order: between what the Church is ontologically and what it must be faithful to in order to fulfill its mission. Rome remains the Church, but Rome has become unfaithful to what the Church ought to be. ... If the conciliar Church has a different final cause from the Catholic Church, it is not simply a Church that has gone astray or is in crisis: structurally, it belongs to a different reality. It occupies the buildings, the institutions, the formal functions of the Catholic Church — but it no longer pursues the proper end of the Church, which is the salvation of souls. ...
The SSPX affirms that it is in full communion with the Pope, but this affirmation is made possible by a further distinction ... the distinction between the person of the Pope and his office.
This distinction is formulated explicitly in a text published on the official website of the General House (fsspx.org), under the title "The Person and the Function of the Pope," citing the theologian Cajetan (Thomas de Vio, O.P., 1469–1534):
The best Catholic theology makes a distinction between the 'person' of the Pope and his 'function.' Persona papæ potest renuere subesse officio papæ: the person of the Pope can refuse to submit to his duty as Pope, writes Cajetan, who adds that persistence in such behavior would render the Pope schismatic per separationem sui ab unitate Capitis. As for the axiom 'Where the Pope is, there is the Church' — Cajetan specifies — it holds insofar as the Pope conducts himself as Pope and as Head of the Church; otherwise 'neither is the Church in him, nor is he in the Church.'
... The logic is complete: the Pope is simultaneously, through his office, the guarantor of the faith that the SSPX defends, and through his personal acts, the principal vector of its destruction. This distinction allows the Society to maintain indefinitely its posture of Roman fidelity while practicing structural disobedience, without ever crossing the threshold of sedevacantism.
The SSPX cannot be criticized for holding these positions on the nature of the Church and on papal authority, because they are true. Abp. Lefebvre was right in saying that popes cannot legitimately deny what was taught by their predecessors in a binding way. Cajetan is correct in saying that we must follow the Pope if and only if he conducts himself as Pope and Head of the Church, and that a pope can fail to do this. It would not have been right to have joined St. Peter in denying Christ, although he was the prince of the apostles. The Church is not defined by its current institutional and hierarchical continuity, but by the permanence of a doctrinal and liturgical content. The nature of the institutional continuity of the Church is obviously defined by doctrinal content, since the thesis that the Church is ruled by the popes and the bishops as successors of the apostles rests upon doctrine, and we must believe this doctrine prior to believing that the Church exists and has this structure.
Fr. Barré describes the SSPX as asserting that 'the Pope is simultaneously, through his office, the guarantor of the faith that the SSPX defends, and through his personal acts, the principal vector of its destruction'. He seems to think that this characterization of the position of the SSPX is a criticism. In fact, the assertion is a correct and Catholic description of the situation of any pope who acts badly in his capacity of ruler of the Church. It applies to many bad popes in the past. It is a matter of fact whether or not it applies to the recent popes, and the claim that it does apply to at least some of them is certainly a defensible one. The characterization of Pope Francis as the principal vector of the destruction of the Church during his reign has a lot of evidence to support it, which can be accessed on Rorate Caeli.
II. The ecclesiology invented by Fr. Barré
Fr. Barré then asserts that these positions imply that the SSPX is the only place where the Church exists.
The SSPX, by preserving this content, becomes de facto the place where the Church of all time is conserved. ... The Church still exists where Rome is; but the truth of what the Church is — its Tradition, its doctrine, its liturgy — is now kept elsewhere, in the SSPX. This shift is decisive: it does not deny the institution; it empties the institution of its normative content in order to deposit that content within an organization that possesses no institutional authority to do so. The SSPX thus arrives, without explicitly formulating it, at the following assertion: the Church of Christ subsists within the SSPX.
This conclusion can only be drawn if the SSPX claims that the only place where true Catholic faith and worship are to be found is within the SSPX itself.
In drawing this conclusion, Fr. Barré wilfully ignores the situation and position of the SSPX, which does not hold itself to be the only place in which the Catholic faith and liturgy are faithfully preserved. The SSPX has always been one of a collection of traditionalist organizations, and acknowledged itself as one of such. Fr. Barré does not have to go further than Wikipedia to find a list of more than a score of such organizations associated with the SSPX, but not forming part of it, and sharing its positions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSPX-affiliated_religious_orders fully). This fact is important for the Society, since if it claimed to be the only group upholding the traditional faith and liturgy its credibility would be gravely impaired. The SSPX is the only member of this group that possesses bishops; these bishops are necessary for the ordination of priests for all the members of the group, and to this extent the SSPX is necessary for the survival of traditionalist Catholic practice. There are many individual thinkers outside the SSPX who hold the positions of the Society on theology, liturgy and the current state of the Church. The late Michael Davies, whom Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described as a 'great man', is an example.
The 'conciliar Church', to which the SSPX opposes itself, is described by the Society as 'this system which calls itself the Conciliar Church and defines itself by the Novus Ordo Missae, indifferentist ecumenism, and the secularization of all of society' (Letter of the SSPX Superiors to Cardinal Gantin, July 1988). If the SSPX asserted that the entire Catholic Church outside themselves fit this definition of the 'conciliar Church', then it would indeed be identifying itself in practice with the Catholic Church. But it does not do so. Obviously there are large sections of the Latin Church, let alone the Catholic Church as a whole, that do not define themselves by these things, and the SSPX has always acknowledged this. The term 'conciliar Church' refers to a dominant faction in the Church and those who knowingly accept and follow the positions of this faction. The expression 'conciliar Church' is unfortunate in one respect, in that it seems to imply that there is something that can be called a church that holds the views the SSPX decries. But it also captures an important truth, which is that this dominant heterodox faction presents itself as being the Catholic Church, as acting for the Catholic Church, and as determining the content of Catholic teaching.
The SSPX bishops do not function as rulers or as teaching authorities. The SSPX does not cite the statements of its own bishops as authoritative. It bases its teaching entirely on the statements of popes and ecumenical councils. But in order to claim to constitute a substitute Church, the SSPX would have to present its bishops as having jurisdiction and a teaching authority that is proper to them. It does not do that. So Fr. Barré's claims about the ecclesiology of the SSPX are false.
Fr. Barré makes further criticisms of the SSPX that should be addressed, since they apply to all traditionalists who agree with the theological positions of the Society. He asserts:
The most fundamental critique is that of the indefectibility of the Church — a dogma guaranteed by Christ's promise to Peter and reaffirmed by the Magisterium: the Church cannot, in a structural and lasting manner, cease to be the ordinary means of salvation. Yet the SSPX's argumentation, particularly in its most recent formulations, directly contradicts this dogma. In an interview given to Le Salon Beige (May 2026), Father Albert Jacquemin formulates the critique:
The SSPX now affirms that the ordinary means of sanctification have practically disappeared from the Catholic Church and that Tradition no longer truly subsists except in the Society. But this affirmation directly contradicts the Catholic doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church. To maintain that the hierarchical Church has substantially ceased to ensure the ordinary transmission of the faith, the sacraments, and grace amounts to practically denying that Christ remains present and active in his Church.
When it comes to doctrine, this criticism equates the Church with the current leadership of the Church. In fact the hierarchical Church is the Church that has existed since her foundation by Christ, and her doctrinal teachings are the ones that have been taught since the time of the Apostles. They are still accessible to the faithful. Many of them are conveniently provided on the Vatican website. There is nothing impossible about almost all of the episcopal leadership of the Church abandoning the teaching of the faith at some time; this happened at the height of the Arian heresy.
In the case of the sacraments and the transmission of grace, Frs. Barré and Jacquemin misrepresent the position of the SSPX. The SSPX Superior, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, stated that 'in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation. Missing, in particular, are both the integral preaching of Catholic truth and morality, and the worthy administration of the sacraments as the Church has always done'. He does not claim, as Frs. Barré and Jacquemin allege, that all the ordinary means of sanctification have practically disappeared from the Catholic Church, or that the hierarchical Church has substantially ceased to ensure the ordinary transmission of the faith, the sacraments, and grace. The SSPX holds that the sacraments celebrated according to the Novus Ordo are valid, and hence communicate grace. Baptism in the Novus Ordo, for example, is valid; confession is valid and absolves sin. Fr. Pagliarani says that not all, but some, of these means of sanctification have disappeared from ordinary parishes; most importantly, the 'integral preaching of Catholic truth and morality'. This is a factual claim that Frs. Barré and Jacquemin do nothing to refute.
Fr. Barré uses the argument of indefectibility to attack the SSPX's position on the liturgy.
Matthieu Lavagna lays out the syllogism: if an indefectible Church cannot promulgate universally rites "intrinsically dangerous for the salvation of souls," and if the SSPX affirms that the post-conciliar Church has done precisely this, then the SSPX de facto denies indefectibility — whatever it may formally claim.
One premise of this argument is false; the Novus Ordo is not an universal rite, but the supposed ritual of the Latin rite. The nature of the Church's indefectibility should however be considered in more detail, as it is essential to our subject.
III. The indefectibility of the Church
Indefectibility is something that surpasses the power of human nature, and it has therefore been considered by theologians as applying to those features of the Church that are of divine origin and immutable. It applies primarily to the doctrinal teaching of the Church, her sacraments, and her divinely established structure. The Church cannot lose any of these things.
There is no debate with the SSPX about whether the college of bishops and the papacy, which are the essential features of the structure of the Church, continue to exist. It would be impossible for the sacraments to cease to exist, but the SSPX holds that the sacraments continue to be validly celebrated in the Novus Ordo, and to be validly and licitly celebrated in the traditional Latin liturgy and in the Eastern Catholic rites. The Church would cease to preserve the doctrine of the faith if she ever formally taught that Catholics must consent to error with the assent of faith, but this has not happened. This formal teaching is what is necessary for the Church to teach as the Church. It does not apply to every public statement made by popes about religious and moral questions. These statements must meet the precise criteria for formal magisterial pronouncements to count as Church teachings. Briefly stated, these criteria are that the content of the teaching must be objectively clear and unambiguous, it must be pronounced by the supreme authority in the Church, it must be stated to be an exercise of the teaching authority of this supreme authority, its content must be described as found in or logically derived from divine revelation, it must be addressed to the entire Church, and it must be stated as requiring belief by all Catholics. The official papal and conciliar texts that are used to advance the errors that the SSPX opposes do not meet these criteria. They are often vague and ambiguous in their expression, permitting an orthodox understanding if strained hard enough. Their existence does not show that the Church is not indefectible.
One might argue that the indefectibility of the Church rules out any flaws in the traditional liturgies of the Church, on the grounds that these liturgies evolved organically and preserved a fundamental identity from the time of the Apostles to the present. This would mean that these liturgies are immutable aspects of the Church that cannot be replaced. This would be a sound application of the argument from indefectibility. This argument cannot be applied to the Novus Ordo, a ritual that was devised by a set of committees composed of undistinguished individuals for one rite of the Church more than nineteen hundred years after the foundation of the Church. It is absurd to suppose that such a ritual is a divinely established or covered by the indefectibility of the Church.
The indefectibility of the Church, far from being an objection to the position of the SSPX, is the basis for this position. The doctrinal position of the SSPX has been stated in a profession of faith, which can be found here: https://fsspx.news/en/news/profession-catholic-faith-society-saint-pius-x-enlighten-souls-face-modern-errors-59816. The entirety of the dogmatic part of this profession, which takes up its first fifteen sections, has been taken from documents issued by popes and ecumenical councils. The main assertions in these sections require the assent of divine and Catholic faith. This profession of faith raises the following question for Fr. Barré:
- If the Church is indefectible, can the dogmatic teachings described in this profession be false?
The answer to this question is 'no'. If some or all of these authoritative teachings were false, the Church would not be indefectible. So Fr. Barré's assertion of the indefectibility of the Church commits him to professing the truth of these teachings. This leads to a further question:
- Are the teachings on Catholic faith and morals in the profession made available to the faithful in an ordinary Catholic Novus Ordo parish?
The answer to this question is also 'no'. The situation is worse than that; any parish priest outside the traditionalist section of the Church who insisted on preaching all the Catholic teachings in this profession of faith would be removed, and any seminarian not in a traditionalist seminary who insisted on openly holding them and arguing for them would not be ordained. These are matters of fact, and anyone who denies them is either ignorant or lying.
Fr. Barré indirectly testifies to this fact by his manner of arguing. The best and most straightforward way to argue against the legitimacy of the SSPX ordinations of bishops is to show that the SSPX claim about the current state of the Church is wrong. If in fact the faithful are being taught the entirety of the Catholic faith and are not left in doubt or in error about its contents by the priests and bishops of the Church, then there is no state of necessity, and there is no basis for the consecrations. Fr. Barré does not do this, preferring to offer an elaborate and sophistical argument based on the SSPX supposedly holding an ecclesiology that its leadership publicly rejects. Why does he not do this? Because he could not be taken seriously; at least, not by anyone who believes – as he professes to do – in the indefectibility of the Church.
An honest argument against the SSPX consecrations would acknowledge that the criticisms made by the SSPX of the current state of the Church are correct, but maintain that this does not justify ordaining bishops without a papal mandate and in direct defiance of a papal order. Such a honest criticism would get Fr. Barré removed from ministry and end his priestly career, so it is not surprising that he does not make it. And in addition to these personal considerations, there is is general one. If you acknowledge that the SSPX is right in its assessment of the state of the Church, even if you do not agree with the Society's action in consecrating bishops, you are committed to doing something about the state of the Church. The supposed crime of the SSPX in consecrating these bishops ceases to be a primary issue, and the mass heresy and apostasy among the priesthood and episcopate becomes the main concern. Such a commitment will lead to great difficulty for priests outside the SSPX, so it is much more comfortable to evade the issue and ignore the valid points that the Society makes.
Two further arguments made by Fr. Barré should be dispatched. The first is that a state of necessity that justifies disobedience to the Pope can only be temporary, but the SSPX maintains that the state of necessity is permanent. The SSPX denies that the state of necessity can be permanent; it maintains that it must eventually end. Its argument for this denial is based on its belief in the indefectibility of the Church. It can be stated as follows:
- If the Church is indefectible, the statements of faith described in the SSPX profession of faith must be true.
- If the Church is indefectible, she cannot indefinitely fail in her task of passing on the faith.
- The Church is indefectible.
- Therefore, the Church will eventually cease to tolerate the errors contrary to these statements of faith, and will return to preaching them fully and accurately.
Since Fr. Barré is committed to the indefectibility of the Church, he must accept the conclusion of this argument. It is not an objection to it that the failure of the Church to properly teach the faith and condemn errors has gone on for decades; this has happened in the past, as with the Arian heresy.
The second argument is what Fr. Barré calls the 'problem of the judge'. He alleges that 'In traditional Catholic theology itself, no infra-pontifical instance can set itself up as judge of the deficiency of the Pope and of the universal Church without placing itself outside ecclesial order.' This is a convenient position for those who want to enforce blind acceptance of and obedience to a pope. Disobedience to the pope can only be justified by a state of necessity; the pope is the only person who can legally declare that a state of necessity exists; therefore, in practice disobedience to the pope can never be justified, since a pope is not going to rule against himself. Obeying him is therefore always virtuous.
In fact, traditional Catholic theology does not support this fascist jurisprudence. The claim of a state of necessity by the SSPX is a legal claim; it asserts that a state of affairs exists that legalizes actions that would otherwise be illegal. Traditional Catholic theology uses the term 'notoriety' to denote a fact that is recognized in law. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia describes notoriety as follows:
Notoriety, Notorious (Lat. Notorietas, notorium, from notus, known).—Notoriety is the quality or the state of things that are notorious; whatever is so fully or officially proved, that it may and ought to be held as certain without further investigation, is notorious. .... Ordinarily it is equivalent to public, manifest, evident, known; all these terms have something in common, they signify that a thing, far from being secret, may be easily known by many. Notoriety, in addition to this common idea, involves the idea of indisputable proof, so that what is notorious is held as proved and serves as a basis for the conclusions and acts of those in authority, especially judges. To be as precise as is possible, “public” means what any one may easily prove or ascertain, what is done openly; what many persons know and hold as certain, is “manifest”; what a greater or less number of persons have learnt, no matter how, is “known”; what is to be held as certain and may no longer be called in question is “notorious”.
Authorities distinguish between notoriety of fact, notoriety of law, and presumptive notoriety, though the last is often considered a subdivision of the second. Whatever is easily shown and is known by a sufficient number of persons to be free from reasonable doubt is notorious in fact. ... Whatever has been judicially ascertained, viz., judicial admissions, an affair fully proved, and the judgment rendered in a law-suit, is notorious in law; the judge accepts the fact as certain without investigation ... Lastly, whatever arises from a rule of law based on a “violent” presumption, for instance, paternity and filiation in case of a legitimate marriage, is presumptively notorious.
Fr. Barré requires the state of necessity in the Church to be notorious in law. This is unreasonable, because it excludes without reason the position that the state of necessity is notorious in fact (presumptive notoriety is not relevant here). The claim of the SSPX is that the state of necessity is notorious in fact. This claim does not mean that the state of necessity is known to exist by people who are ignorant, unbelieving, prejudiced, or seriously lacking in judgment; it refers to what a reasonable man would judge to be the case on the basis of the publicly available evidence. Fr. Barré avoids the question of the actual state of the Church, so he has no grounds for denying that the existence of a state of necessity is notorious in fact.
IV. The Roman policy towards the SSPX
Fr. Barré's involved and sophistical arguments are intended to show that the SSPX is in fact schismatic, a conclusion that provides a justification for excommunicating the leadership of the SSPX and the laity associated with them. These supposed schismatic characteristics are claimed by him to exist prior to the recent consecration of bishops by the SSPX, which are merely the manifestation of this schismatic position.
Since the SSPX is not in fact schismatic, what is behind the recent consecration of bishops by the Society and the consequent excommunications? The immediate background to the consecration is the constant policy of the SSPX since the time of Abp. Lefebvre. The SSPX has always sought three things; canonical regularization of its activities, recognition of its dogmatic and liturgical positions as legitimate, and permission to consecrate one or more bishops from its ranks to permit it to continue its ministry. Bishops are needed for the mission of the SSPX to preserve the traditional Latin liturgy, since they are required to celebrate the sacraments – confirmation and ordination – that are properly episcopal. The sacrament of ordination is needed to preserve the the SSPX – a society of priests – in existence. The SSPX has always proposed to Rome that a list of candidates for the episcopate who are members of the Society be presented to the Holy See, and that Rome should approve one or more of these candidates for ordination. This is the norm for all the Latin Catholic dioceses in the world.
The popes have never agreed to this proposal. It was never accepted by John Paul II and Benedict, let alone by Francis or Leo. In contrast, such agreement is given as a matter of course with most dioceses over the world, even though in many cases the candidates for the episcopacy being put forward by dioceses and accepted by Rome are openly hostile to Catholic teaching, and are known or reasonably suspected by Rome to be so. What explains this Roman policy?
The answer is that the SSPX, unlike dioceses in Germany, America, or elsewhere that are known to be completely heterodox, is opposed to the way in which the Catholic Church has been set up since the Second Vatican Council. If Rome had agreed to the episcopal consecration of any of the candidates put forward by the Society, that would have recognized the Society as a normal part of the Church, and would as such have constituted acceptance of the position of the Society on this matter as legitimate for Catholics to hold.
This is what was behind the insistence on 'conversations about doctrine' and 'agreement about doctrine' on the part of Rome before permission was granted for ordination of a bishop or bishops for the SSPX. If this insistence was actually about Catholic doctrine, it would be totally absurd. The SSPX upholds all the doctrines of the Catholic faith with no reservations, and is known by all to do so.
This can be seen in the statement of faith issued by the Society in May ( https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/05/sspx-superior-published-declaration-of.html), and the fuller Profession of Faith issued by the Society in June immediately prior to the consecrations (https://fsspx.news/en/news/open-letter-his-holiness-pope-leo-xiv-and-cardinals-holy-church-59815, https://fsspx.news/en/news/profession-catholic-faith-society-saint-pius-x-enlighten-souls-face-modern-errors-59816). This statement and profession are a proper response by the SSPX to the invitation by the Holy See to engage in a dialogue on doctrine. Such a dialogue can and should be carried out in public. They are derived from the magisterial teachings of popes and ecumenical councils. Not only is it permissible for Catholics to believe the entire contents of the profession of faith, it is necessary for them to believe with the assent of faith virtually all of the contents of the profession, which do no more than repeat Catholic dogma as found in magisterial documents. The parts of the seventeenth and last section of the profession (§145-§150) that deal with the current crisis in the Church are permissible for Catholics to believe, and are largely a statement of obvious truths. It is notable that the profession does not reject any text of the Second Vatican Council, but only states that the influence of the Council promoted deviations from the faith. Catholics may hold that the influence of an ecumenical council was noxious in some respects. It is only the authoritative teachings of a council that demand their assent; they do not have to approve of all the historical results that it led to. One may, for example, reasonably hold that the definitions of papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the First Vatican Council led to an exaggerated and harmful conception of papal power, while accepting the definitions themselves.
The claims made by Rome about doctrinal problems with the SSPX are simply a front for the real Roman objection, which is the public criticism by the SSPX of the current situation in the Church. This criticism is unacceptable to the Roman authorities, and always has been ever since the foundation of the SSPX. Rome has refused to ordain bishops for the SSPX because the Society refuses to abandon this criticism. The other traditional organizations, the former 'Ecclesia Dei' groups, are permitted to exist on condition of not making such criticisms. Individual members of these organizations are known to accept these criticisms and to express them individually with some degree of discretion, but the criticisms cannot be made with full publicity or be the policy of the organizations themselves. The Roman game of objecting to the doctrinal positions of the SSPX and refusing to ordain bishops for the Society is simply a tool for Roman policy towards the SSPX. This policy is to offer the Society three options; either it renounces its criticisms of the Second Vatican Council and the current state of the Church in order to be regularized, or it is left without bishops to ordain its priests and confirm its faithful and eventually dies out, or it ordains its own bishops and is branded as schismatic. The Society, after decades of fruitless negotiations and discussions with Roman authorities, now understands this policy, and will not accept either disappearance or renunciation of its criticisms. That is why it has proceeded to ordain its new bishops.
The reasons for this policy have been somewhat different for different popes. Paul VI believed in the post-conciliar setup and was its main architect, and found the criticisms of the SSPX intolerable for this reason. John Paul II and Benedict XVI acknowledged that some of these criticisms were justified, but still believed in some sort of positive Vatican II project that could be made to work and that would be damaged by legitimizing the expression of the Society's dissenting views. An obvious reason for wanting to suppress the SSPX's criticisms of Vatican II and the post-conciliar Church is that public acknowledgement of the dire situation would lead to chaos and division in the Church. This motivation probably had some influence on John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but both of these pontiffs seem to have been living to some extent in a mental fantasy world in which the situation of the Church was on the whole not too bad, and improving. The the SSPX criticisms would have been considered by them as threats to valuable growth. How far they thought the SSPX criticisms were unfair and inaccurate, and how far they thought them justified but better not ventilated in public, is hard to say, but it can be guessed that John Paul II at least laid much more weight on the former consideration than the latter one. Pope Francis had no sympathy with the positions of the SSPX, but he liked causing chaos and believed in it as a method of ruling; hence his unprecedented favours to the Society, whose disruptive character he appreciated. He did not regularize their situation because he did not believe in regularization. Pope Leo, from the available evidence, is totally committed to the post-conciliar modernist establishment, in which he was trained and in which he spent his whole career. He will not legitimize the positions of the SSPX by regularization.
V. The new situation arising from the episcopal consecrations
The Roman response to the ordinations of bishops by the SSPX in July 2026 is an important, indeed a decisive, evolution of policy. John Paul II reacted to the earlier canonizations in 1988 by calling on bishops to give facilities for the old mass, and by the creation of the 'Ecclesia Dei' religious communities, which were permitted to include the exclusive use of the old liturgy in their consitutions on the condition that they refrained from all public criticism of Roman policy, the Second Vatican Council, and the Novus Ordo. The procedure for the reconciliation of priests coming from the SSPX issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/07/dicastery-for-doctrine-of-faith.html) rejects this approach and is designed to make it impossible. Such priests must make an individual request to be regularized and go through years of probation, during which any recalcitrance will earn him rejection.
This procedure for reconciliation contains a very important passage about the laity attached to the SSPX:
The imposition of a canonical penalty upon lay persons belonging to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X is not to be presumed automatically, but must instead be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Since imputability requires full knowledge and deliberate consent, examples of established imputability may include:
(1)Lay members of the Third Order of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X;
(2) Lay faithful who habitually participate in SSPX liturgical celebrations while formally sharing its doctrinal positions.
The canonical penalty in question is that of excommunication, as stated in the decree of excommunication issued after the consecration of the bishops (https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/07/decree-of-excommunication-published.html), which states that the lay faithful who formally adhere to the SSPX are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated.
The content of this ruling needs to be spelled out. The laity who are designated by it cannot be excommunicated for participating in the consecration of the bishops, since as laity they cannot have participated in this event. Approval of this consecration is not a dogmatic position, so it cannot be part of the adherence to the dogmatic positions of the SSPX that incurs the penalty of excommunication according to the ruling. Acceptance of the position on the SSPX concering the present state of the Church is not a dogmatic position either. Adherence to the dogmatic position of the SSPX can only consist in belief in the positions that the SSPX has set forward in its public declarations of faith referenced above. But these dogmatic positions are simply a description of the Catholic faith. The Dicastery has thus ruled that Catholic faith in the laity attached to the SSPX is punishable by excommunication, and that to have this penalty of excommunication lifted it will be necessary for these lay persons to renounce the faith.
This ruling is of course legally invalid, but the Roman authorities involved do not care about that, because they do not believe in canon law as a true and binding legal system, and hold in contempt those who understand it as being such. The concept of canon law as real law that binds everyone in the Church, including those in authority, belongs to the idea of the Church as a divinely established perfect society with real legal authority over its members, an idea that they believe to be superstitious nonsense. For them, canon law consists in administrative guidelines that they are free to override if they wish, and that can be used in any way they want to further their purposes. The announcement that the bishops, priests and faithful of the SSPX are in schism is in their minds just a useful political tool to further the Roman policy, and a way of signalling their intent to punish and exclude anyone who resists their programme.
The Roman response to the SSPX consecrations is more significant than the consecrations themselves. Together with the choice to not revoke Traditionis custodes, which calls for the eradication of the traditional Latin liturgy, it shows that the SSPX's description of the gravity of the state of the Church is correct. If the consecration of the bishops was in fact the wrong thing to do at the time it was done, then the Roman response has retroactively validated the position of the bishops. It is now the case that to be regularized by the Roman authorities, these bishops would have to deny the faith. This is impermissible, so they are entitled to go on as they are and exercise their ministry.
The evolution of Roman policy towards the SSPX into an open attack on the Catholic faith is important for traditionalists outside the SSPX. Many of them have joined in a cowardly and sordid attack on the SSPX, repeating the Roman charges of schism and sinful disobedience. They have been completely silent about Leo's dubious past and present (see e.g. https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/2025/05/08/pope-leo-cardinal-robert-prevost-augustinians-chicago, https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/unearthed-1995-photo-shows-pope-leo-xiv-participating-in-pachamama-ritual/, https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/05/heresy-leo-xiv-absolute-exclusion-of.html, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2025/05/statement-on-pope-leo-xiv/, https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/has-leo-xiv-contradicted-catholic-teaching-on-just-war/) and destructive appointments, and the obvious unbelief of Cardinal Fernandez, the signatory of the edicts against the SSPX. They hope in this way to be permitted to exist by the Roman authorities.
This hope is a miscalculation born of lack of moral fibre. It seems that the Roman authorities do not, as things now stand, intend to completely extirpate the traditional Latin mass outside the SSPX. Attempting to do so would be too risky; it might lead to a revolt which would involve the criticisms and refusals made by the SSPX metastatizing throughout the Church. But the traditional Latin liturgy cannot simply be left alone in the Church outside the SSPX. It is in its very nature a criticism of the post-conciliar setup, as modernists like Prof. Andrea Grillo have observed, and it is too successful. The level of vocations and adherence to the faith in traditionalist communities is far higher than that in Novus Ordo ones. Traditionalist communities usually grow with time rather than continuing to shrink, as happens in the rest of the Latin Church. This is a threat to the postconciliar establishment that cannot be tolerated. The Roman strategy is to make existence very difficult for traditionalist groups, by getting bishops to restrict or eliminate them where they are successful, imposing various kinds of restrictions, shutting down conservative orders that might be sympathetic to them, and so on. A good example of this is Charlotte, South Carolina, where flourishing traditionalist congregations have been shut down by the newly appointed bishop Michael Martin. Traditionis custodes has been kept in place so that this policy can be implemented.
Some non-SSPX traditionalists are no doubt aware of this, and are relying on the lack of enthusiasm in much of the Church for the Roman policy of suppressing the old liturgy. They think they can survive until Rome runs out of steam and gets tired of enforcing this policy, sheltering under sympathetic or simply apathetic bishops who have no zeal to get rid of them. There is something in this idea, but not enough, for two reasons.
The first reason is that the price of keeping silent about the state of the Church is too high to pay. It is dishonest, and it affects the state of mind of those who do it. Making false public statements, even under duress, causes one to come to believe these statements, or at least to cease to believe that they are false. The psychological strain of saying something that one does not believe eventually gets relieved by conforming one's beliefs to one's statements. This is a principle of indoctrination and mind control that is understood and used by all totalitarian states. It is especially powerful in its operation when the false beliefs in question are ones that one would like to be true; one would like to believe that Leo is a good pope who cares for the faith and the faithful, that the ecclesiastical authorities believe in and respect the law, that the episcopal leadership of the Church is basically doing its job or at least trying to do so.
The second reason is that these comforting beliefs are diametrically opposed to the truth. The clerical leadership of the Catholic Church is deeply corrupt. Most Catholic bishops reject some or all of the divinely revealed truths set out in the SSPX's profession of faith. Cardinal Fernandez certainly does. Virtually all professors of the faculties of theology that teach Catholic priests and laity reject some or all of them as well. There is not a single Catholic university in the world that upholds the entirety of the Catholic faith. Most seminarians are taught heresy, and if they reject it they must be discreet in expressing their faith or they will not be ordained. The Catholic episcopacy in many countries, and the Roman Curia, are dominated by homosexual networks. Pope Leo, like Francis, favours these homosexual networks and their associates in his episcopal and curial appointments. Examples include Bishop Mark O’Connell of Albany, NY, Bishop Christian Würtz of Eichstätt, Germany, and Bishop Thomas Hennen of Baker, Oregon. The continued dominance of this corrupt leadership is not compatible with the survival of the traditional Latin liturgy and the Catholic faith. This leadership is not going to get tired of trying to destroy this faith and liturgy, and give up the attempt to do so. If it appears ready to tolerate these things, that is simply a deception undertaken for tactical purposes.
Fr. Barré is thus not the only Catholic to respond to the consecrations of the SSPX bishops by evasion and dishonesty. As observed above, an honest approach to the consecrations and the reasons for them given by the SSPX would require facing uncomfortable facts and getting into an uncomfortable position. It would require accepting that the SSPX is substantially right about doctrine and the current state of the Church. This does not mean blind acceptance and admiration for the SSPX, which is far from perfect. It simply means acknowledging the obvious crisis in the Church, which has been described and analyzed by many scholars and thinkers outside the Society as well as in it, and following the Catholic faith. Obedience to God and zeal for souls would not be bothered by this; but these qualities are not abundant among Catholics today. Perhaps an unwillingness to acknowledge this deficiency is the ultimate evasion that needs to be rectified.
