Pope Leo XIV this week faces his first real crisis as head of the Catholic Church. The Society of Saint Pius X, an ultra-traditionalist breakaway group, is poised to consecrate four bishops without papal authorisation. On Monday, the Roman Pontiff addressed a final appeal to SSPX leaders, warning them that their “schismatic act” would amount to a “sin of extreme gravity”, and hinting that the society could lose its faculty to perform certain sacraments.

What’s surprising, though, is that nearly all the notable traditionalist voices in the Church hierarchy and among the laity are lining up behind the Pope, rather than the SSPX. This, notwithstanding some “trad” malcontents grumbling about Leo’s commitment to social-justice issues, as they did with his immediate predecessor.

The origins of the crisis lie in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council more than 60 years ago. Rejecting the council’s liturgical reforms and emphasis on religious liberty (within the limits of the common good), French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in 1970 with the explicit intention of maintaining preconciliar norms. The break came with Lefebvre’s decision in 1988 to consecrate four SSPX bishops on his own authority. Pope John Paul II declared that, under canon law, Lefebvre and these four bishops had incurred automatic excommunication for their schismatic act.

Yet the successors of Peter continued to nurture hopes of reconciliation. In an act of mercy in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four new bishops (Lefebvre had already died by then). A few years later, Benedict’s successor Francis granted SSPX priests the faculty to hear confessions and witness Christian marriages.

In his warning letter this week, Leo alluded to his predecessors’ gestures of Petrine “affection”, made in recognition of “the devotion to liturgical life, commitment to priestly formation, apostolic zeal, and desire for fidelity to Tradition” that characterises individual members. Yet the SSPX seems undeterred, and is seemingly prepared for a full schism from the Roman communion.

What has surprised many observers, however, is the swiftness with which more mainstream forces in the traditionalist movement have condemned the SSPX in defence of the Pope’s course of action.

Rorate Caeli, the hugely influential trad blog that opposed the Francis papacy over its supposedly liberal direction, warned the SSPX today that “Leo XIV is filled with the heart of Saint Peter and the epistolary sincerity of Saint Paul. Catholics should listen closely.” Likewise, Eric Sammons, the Editor-in-Chief of the trad organ Crisis, wrote this morning: “I appreciate that the Holy Father is acting as a father here, making clear what he is forbidding, and urging his children to avoid that path. I pray the SSPX leadership would stand down.” Cardinal Robert Sarah, who has previously been tipped as a long-shot trad contender for the papacy, lamented earlier this year how the SSPX’s decision had caused a “new tear in the seamless garment of the Church”.

Why the society insists on going ahead with unlawful consecrations, despite the warnings of responsible traditional forces, will remain a mystery. It is, Catholics might say, the “mystery of evil”.

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Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It

SohrabAhmari

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