The SSPX Oath of Fidelity

Per Archbishop Lefebvre's instructions, each Priest of the SSPX signs an Oath of Fidelity, which recognises the Pope as legitimate. So much for the claims of sedevacantism!

From One Peter Five

By Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

What Do the Priests of the SSPX Hold?

As an avid reader, I try to read everything worthwhile I can get my hands on that concerns modern church history and especially the traditional movement. One of the best such books, truly indispensable, is Yves Chiron’s Between Rome and Rebellion: A History of Catholic Traditionalism with Special Attention to France.

On pp. 283–84, we find an important document that I’m surprised hasn’t been bruited about from one end of the internet to the other. Chiron introduces the text thus:

Archbishop Lefebvre also [in 1979] imposed a Declaration of Fidelity on future priests as a condition for ordination. This declaration, called the Declaration of Fidelity to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, is an official and clear summary of the SSPX’s positions on the Pope and the New Mass and a commitment to admit them. This very important text, still in use today, has never been published. I thank Bishop Tissier de Mallerais for having communicated it to me and for authorizing its publication in full for the first time.

The text reads as follows:

Declaration of Fidelity to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X

I, the undersigned (N.),

Recognize (N.) as pope of the Holy Catholic Church. That is why I am prepared to pray for him publicly as Sovereign Pontiff.

I refuse to follow him when he departs from Catholic Tradition, especially in matters of religious freedom and ecumenism, as well as in reforms that are harmful to the Church.

I admit that not all Masses celebrated according to the new rite are invalid. However, in view of the poor translations of the Novus Ordo Missæ, its ambiguity, which favors its interpretation in a Protestant sense, and the plurality of the ways in which it is celebrated, I recognize that the danger of invalidity is very great.

I affirm that the new rite of the Mass does not actually formulate any heresy expressly, but that it “departs impressively, on the whole as well as in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass,” and that for this reason this new rite is in itself evil.

Therefore, I will never celebrate Holy Mass according to this new rite, even under threat of ecclesiastical penalties; nor will I ever positively advise anyone to actively participate in such a Mass.

Finally, I accept as legitimate the liturgical reform of John XXIII. I therefore receive all of its liturgical books as Catholic: the Missal, Breviary, etc., and I commit myself to use them exclusively, according to their calendar and rubrics, especially for the celebration of the Mass and for the common recitation of the breviary.

In so doing, I wish to manifest the obedience that binds me to my superiors, as well as that which binds me to the Sovereign Pontiff in all his legitimate acts.

Thus the text.

As Yves Chiron is one of the most respected historians in France and he received permission from Bp. Tissier de Mallerais to publish the text in the original French edition of 2022 (the English edition is from 2024), there can be no hesitation in accepting the authenticity of it.

I believe it is helpful to see precisely what the SSPX clergy commit themselves to believing and doing, because it distinguishes them from, on the one hand, the mainstream postconciliar clergy and, on the other hand, from the sedevacantists. Indeed, the sedevacantist threat, which had reared its head at this time (1979), as one can read in detail in Chiron, is what compelled the Archbishop to add the stipulations about accepting John XXIII’s liturgical books.