Following its illicit consecrations in 1988, John Paul II said ‘formal adherence to the schism constitutes a grave offence against God and entails the excommunication established under Church law’.
The Holy See confirmed that a traditionalist group’s plans to ordain bishops will incur excommunication if they take place.
In a statement on Wednesday, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández repeated a previous warning that episcopal ordinations announced by the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) for 1 July “do not have a papal mandate”.
He cited John Paul II’s motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, which declared such ordinations “a schismatic act” and warned that “formal adherence to the schism constitutes a grave offence against God and entails the excommunication established under Church law”.
John Paul II issued Ecclesia Dei on 2 July 1988 in response to the ordination of four SSPX priests by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre two days earlier despite warnings from Rome.
Lefebvre had founded the society in 1970, rejecting the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and celebrating only the pre-conciliar liturgy. It was never granted canonical status.
Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated incurred excommunication latae sententiae.
Following Lefebvre’s death in 1991 and negotiations between Rome and the SSPX, Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four bishops in 2009.
Two of them survive.
The SSPX announced its intention to ordain more bishops in February this year, claiming that “the objective state of grave necessity in which souls find themselves requires such a decision”. Its superior Fr Davide Pagliarani met Cardinal Fernández but rejected the “theological dialogue” he proposed to bring the society into full communion.
In an interview published by the SSPX last month, Pagliarani called the consecrations “an act of fidelity aimed at preserving the means to save our souls and those of others”.
While calling Pope Francis’ legacy a “disaster” for the Church, he claimed the late Pope had “an apparently equivocal attitude towards us” and “told us explicitly that he would never condemn” the society during a private audience in 2022.
Pagliarani argued “that the rupture does not come from the Society of Saint Pius X, but from the flagrant divergence of official teachings from Tradition and the constant Magisterium of the Church”.
“If one does not recognise that what is at stake is the faith itself, then inevitably the Society of Saint Pius X can only be perceived as a disciplinary problem, a problem of rebellion or of disobedience,” he said. “This is the mistake unfortunately made by those who claim that the Society of Saint Pius X is only consecrating bishops to preserve its own autonomy.”
In a letter to bishops following the lifting of the SSPX bishops’ excommunication in 2009, Benedict XVI emphasised that the society’s lack of canonical status “is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons”.
“As long as the society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved,” he wrote.
“In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.”
On Thursday, the SSPX published a “declaration of Catholic faith” addressed to Pope Leo, complaining that “none of the concerns expressed [by it] have received any truly satisfactory response” while “the only solution truly considered by the Holy See has appeared to be that of canonical sanctions”.
The declaration affirms the society’s position that “there is neither salvation nor remission of sins” outside the Roman Catholic Church, and that the Church’s unity “flows essentially from the adherence of all her members to the one true faith”.
“The denial of even a single truth of the faith destroys faith itself and renders radically impossible all communion with the Catholic Church,” it says, rejecting ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.
It also asserts “secularism of institutions and nations constitutes an implicit denial of the divinity and universal kingship of Our Lord”, claiming: “Christendom is not a mere historical phenomenon, but the only order willed by God among men.”
The DDF statement on Wednesday concluded: “The Holy Father continues in his prayers to ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten those responsible for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X so that they may reconsider the extremely grave decision they have taken.”