VATICAN CITY (AP) 鈥� The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope鈥檚 consent, declaring the had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It also excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.
By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican鈥檚 doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church鈥檚 canon law to respond to of four new bishops.
The society, known by its acronym 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. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.
During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity. An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome.
The harshness of the response suggested that after trying to negotiate with the SSPX, the Vatican under had had enough.
A decree targeting bishops and faithful
In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a 鈥渟chismatic act鈥� and declared the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the Catholic Church.
It declared SSPX priests 鈥� who number about 750 鈥� to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer. The Vatican warned the faithful to stop going to the society鈥檚 Masses, declaring 鈥渢hose who adhere formally鈥� to the society are considered themselves schismatic and excommunicated.
The Vatican has previously described 鈥渁dherence鈥� to the SSPX as including those Catholics who share in the schism by placing their loyalties to the society above the pope, and those who participate exclusively in SSPX Masses. As a result, Thursday’s decree could potentially involve the excommunications of thousands of rank-and-file SSPX faithful.
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 actions were announced just as one of the new bishops, Pascal Schreiber of Switzerland, was celebrating his first Mass as a bishop in Econe.
Marc-Andr茅 Mabillard, media manager for the society, expressed shock at the severity of the sanctions and called them 鈥渦njust.”
鈥淔or us, this excommunication extended to the faithful is brutal. It鈥檚 not what we expect from a father to whom we refer every day,鈥� he told The Associated Press. 鈥淲e are told, 鈥榊ou claim to have the truth.鈥� Fine. I鈥檓 just saying that we certainly have our flaws, but our main flaw today is having a leader who doesn鈥檛 want to communicate with us. And that鈥檚 terrible.鈥�
The Vatican’s doctrine chief, Cardinal V铆ctor Manuel Fern谩ndez, met in February with the SSPX superior, the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, and proposed a dialogue. But Pagliarani asked instead to meet with Leo, who declined but wrote a letter Tuesday begging the SSPX to call off the consecrations.
A group formed in opposition of modernism
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鈥檚 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 鈥渟chismatic act.鈥�
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鈥檚 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.
The Vatican responded so aggressively in part because the group poses something of a threat by representing a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church that has grown in the decades since its original break from Rome. While representing a fraction of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic faithful, the SSPX now has six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
Traditionalists in communion with Rome respond
In a note accompanying the decree, the Vatican said it was willing, 鈥渓ike a caring mother,鈥� to welcome any SSPX faithful back into the fold. But it didn’t create any specific Vatican entity to receive them, decreeing only that Vatican ambassadors around the world would establish procedures for local bishops to follow.
While the SSPX is out of communion with Rome, plenty of other Catholic traditionalists who love the Latin Mass remain in communion with the Holy See. They had been watching carefully to see how Leo’s Vatican would respond to the SSPX consecrations and were surprised by the harshness of Thursday’s sanctions.
Luigi Casalini, of the blog Messa in Latino, meaning Latin Mass, said the excommunication of the bishops was correct because canon law provides for it.
But the extension of the excommunications to SSPX priests and faithful was 鈥渁n act of unusual severity,鈥� he said, while saying the invalidation of SSPX sacraments was problematic.
鈥淎bove all, we find it hard to believe that, to date, no Vatican body has been established to manage potential defectors,鈥� as was the case after the 1988 excommunications, Casalini told The Associated Press.
The SSPX has accused the church of being rife with errors, such as modernism and liberalism, and that only it is upholding the true faith of Christ. It has justified the consecrations, citing a 鈥渟tate of necessity鈥� to minister to its faithful. Only two of the original four bishops consecrated in 1988 are alive, and the SSPX has said they simply are too old to minister to all the SSPX faithful.
One of the thousands of worshippers at Wednesday鈥檚 consecrations was Allison Isermann, a 24-year-old from St. Marys, Kansas, who grew up as a society member and strongly defended its teaching in opposition to Vatican II, specifically its openness to those of other faiths.
鈥淚t is actually very anti-Catholic and anti-charitable to affirm others and their beliefs when it is our duty and our mission to actually convert and sanctify the world and to restore all things in Christ,鈥� she said.
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Jamey Keaten contributed from Econe, Switzerland.
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