Why the SSPX Bishop Decision Matters Far Beyond Church Politics

Mr Masciullo points out that how the Vatican responds to the SSPX's decision to consecrate Bishops goes far beyond mere Church politics.

From The European Conservative

By Gaetano Masciullo

Selective enforcement and uneven tolerance are shaping perceptions far beyond traditionalist circles.

On February 2, Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X, announced that he had instructed the two remaining bishops among those consecrated by Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 to proceed with new episcopal ordinations on July 1.

This news may appear—especially to those unfamiliar with Vatican affairs—to be a minor ecclesiastical matter. In reality, however, the consequences could be enormously significant for the rest of the Church. But let us proceed in order.

In 1962, Pope John XXIII solemnly opened the Second Vatican Council. The original intent was presented as pastoral rather than doctrinal: the Church needed to “update” the way it preached the Gospel to the modern world. This “updating” implied a reconfiguration of authority in a less juridical and more pastoral direction. “The Bride of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than take up the arms of severity,” John XXIII said in the opening address, “she thinks that present needs should be met by explaining more clearly the value of her teaching rather than by condemning. Not because false doctrines are lacking, but because they are all so clearly opposed to the right principles of honesty and have produced such deadly fruits that today men seem to be beginning spontaneously to reprove them.”

The Council, however, rapidly expanded beyond the limited scope originally envisaged by John XXIII and was soon considering topics such as the liturgy, the nature and structure of the Church and of the episcopate, ecumenism, and religious freedom. The “pastoral” dimension remained, but it was translated into doctrinally weighty documents whose scope and authority approached that of Apostolic Constitutions, that is, documents of the highest magisterial level.

From the end of the nineteenth century, a theological current had been spreading within the Catholic Church that sought to reconcile doctrine with modern philosophy and science. These theologians, in fact, wanted to construct a new doctrine which was, in their view, more compatible with the modern vision of the world, which treats man as one animal among others, with rationality emerging through contingent evolutionary processes. 

Such a vision, these nouveaux théologiens said, would be incompatible with the idea of man created in the image and likeness of God, lord of creation, who then fell from the state of original justice and thus became in need of the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whose merits are applied through the Sacraments of the one Catholic Church. From this followed their proposal to reinterpret dogmas not as objectively revealed truths, but as symbolic expressions of humanity’s religious experience, mutable over time and adaptable according to contemporary cultural categories. 

In this perspective, Revelation ceased to be understood as a concrete historical intervention of God, but the “progressive emergence of the divine in human consciousness,” and faith not adherence to supernatural truths, but a vital feeling in continuous evolution.

Despite the dual official condemnation by the Holy See at the hands of Popes Pius X (1907) and Pius XII (1950), modernist thought passed from universities to seminaries and, eventually, into the episcopate, climbing the hierarchy and creating internal pressure groups whose interests increasingly aligned with groups historically hostile to Catholicism, including Freemasons, Protestants, and the like.

The Council, as it had been conceived by John XXIII, could only become the battlefield of the two camps. The heated discussions carried out by the Council Fathers and the final documents that were drafted were widely perceived as incomplete, ambiguous, or even containing critical points for one faction and the other, so much so as to stimulate in the decades that followed the inevitable emergence of interpretative Schools in both senses. 

Benedict XVI went so far as to speak of the coexistence within the Church of a “hermeneutic of continuity” and a “hermeneutic of discontinuity.” Under Pope Francis, the latter prevailed.

According to the progressives, Paul VI curbed the impulse of John XXIII; according to the conservatives, he instead radicalized an intuition that John XXIII had imagined as more limited. If we were to offer a judgment, we would rather say that Paul VI did not change direction, but gave the Council a broader, more systematic structure, substantially weakening the Roman character of the Church.

In all this, the French bishop Marcel Lefebvre emerged as one of the most critical conservative voices of the Second Vatican Council. Although he signed most of its documents, Lefebvre contested several conciliar texts. In 1969, four years after the close of Vatican II, Paul VI approved the liturgical reform, justifying it as a product of the Council. Deeply troubled by the elements of novelty and by the Protestant style that had been introduced, Lefebvre founded the Society of Saint Pius X in Fribourg, Switzerland, with the aim of forming priests in Traditional Catholic doctrine. 

In 1975, the Holy See revoked the canonical approval of the Society due to growing criticism of Vatican II and of the Magisterium of Paul VI. In 1976 Marcel Lefebvre was barred by the Vatican from performing priestly and episcopal duties, and the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X thereby entered into a formally irregular canonical status.

After the election of John Paul II, Lefebvre, who increasingly felt the weight of his years, asked for guarantees to safeguard the Church’s liturgical and doctrinal tradition. The pope never gave a response. Between November and December 1987, however, he sent the Canadian cardinal Édouard Gagnon to the seminary of Écône for an apostolic visitation. The overall judgment was positive. Incidentally, Gagnon was the author of a controversial secret investigation into Masonic infiltrations in the Roman Curia, commissioned by Paul VI in 1975.

Despite this, Rome did not accommodate Lefebvre’s requests and, in 1988, he proceeded to ordain, without pontifical mandate, four bishops: Bernard Fellay, Alfonso de Galarreta, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, and Richard Williamson. Only the first two are still alive. 

The rift between Rome and Écône appeared irreparable. Numerous but meager, over the years, were the attempts by John Paul II and then Benedict XVI to heal the fracture by encouraging partial reintegration by drawing adherents away from the Society: first, the establishment of Ecclesia Dei (1988), then Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops (2009), finally the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) to liberalize the traditional liturgy. 

Even Francis, who pursued an extensive restructuring of Church governance under the banner of synodality, sought to extend a hand to the Society, for example by recognizing, in 2016, the licitness of confessions and then, the following year, of marriages under certain conditions.

Over the years, the bishops ordained by Lefebvre have dwindled to two, following Williamson’s split in 2012 and the death of Tissier de Mallerais in 2024. The two remaining bishops are advanced in age, and it is not easy for them to oversee a worldwide and steadily growing community. Hence, the need for new episcopal ordinations.

In the summer of 2025, Fr. Pagliarani requested a formal audience with Pope Leo XIV to present these needs. “I mentioned our doctrinal differences,” Pagliarani said in a recent interview, “but also our sincere desire to serve the Catholic Church tirelessly, since we are servants of the Church despite our unrecognized canonical status.” No reply was ever received.

A few months later, the Superior of the Society tried again. This time the reply came from Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Healing situations of schism—or near‑schism—falls, in fact, within his remit. The response was evasive. This led to the announcement on February 2 of the decision to ordain new bishops—five, according to sources—on July 1.

The announcement produced the intended effect. On February 12, therefore, Pagliarani will meet Fernández, to attempt to reach a compromise. Should the Holy See reject the Society’s request to proceed with new episcopal ordinations, and adopt new disciplinary measures or canonical sanctions against it, several internal contradictions will emerge.

The first knot concerns the idea of law in the Church of Leo XIV. If canon law becomes an instrument to defend power rather than advance the salvation of souls, the principle that undergirds all canonical legislation is overturned: Lex suprema salus animarum. When law serves to protect authority but not orthodoxy, a double standard arises: “schism” is struck, but heresy is tolerated, as if the two phenomena could be separated, when historically heresy is the root of schism.

Faced with the risk of schism on the left, which we discussed in a previous analysis, Leo XIV—determined to maintain cohesion at any cost—must now reckon with a possible schism “on the right.” The former he has sought to contain; the latter his actions now risk precipitating. 

It will be ironic to witness sanctions against the Society and to note that, for decades, it has been accepted that the Chinese Communist Party freely appoint Catholic bishops, up to an agreement whose contents remain secret and which, in fact, prevents the pope from openly criticizing Beijing. Public criticism of Beijing from the Holy See has been conspicuously restrained in these years; yet even Israel—which has solid international instruments with which to react to hostile rhetoric—has been the object of harsh positions taken by the highest Catholic authorities in recent months.

Second knot. The hypocrisy of contemporary Catholic ecumenism would also emerge, functioning more as a diplomatic instrument than as a real theological path. On the one hand, it is affirmed that “pluralism and diversity of religions are willed by God,” and figures such as King Charles III of England are received with full honors, paid homage in his capacity as head of a schismatic and culturally “woke” Church. On the other hand, the doors are closed to dialogue with those who defend Traditional doctrine and liturgy. It is an ecumenism that opens outward but hardens inward.

Third knot. It could also reveal the structural fragility of a Papacy that, in practice, remains constrained—perhaps even governed by proxy—by a Curia that is still largely inherited from the previous pontificate. Internal tensions are not lacking: the Secretariat of State and figures such as Ilson de Jesús Montanari, Secretary for Bishops, will hardly accept losing ground in the face of the demands of Lefebvre’s heirs. The result will be the confirmation of a Pontificate that struggles to impose a coherent direction, but moves within an apparatus that does not truly belong to it.

Pictured: His Lordship Bernard Fellay, ca 2008