The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to the traditionalist society that consecrated bishops without the pope's consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicating its bishops and priests, and warning its faithful they too face the harshest sanctions in the Catholic Church. The Vatican's doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church's canon law in response to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops at the society's seminary in Econe, Switzerland. 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, reports the AP.
In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the four new bishops and the two bishops who participated in Wednesday's ceremony. It declared the consecrations a "schismatic act" and declared the society itself had created a schism, or intentional rupture with the Catholic Church. The Vatican warned the faithful who go to the society's Masses to stop, declaring "those who adhere formally" to the society are considered schismatic and excommunicated. It declared SSPX priests to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer. 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 harshness of the response suggested that after nearly five decades of trying to negotiate with the SSPX, the Holy See has had enough. 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. In an explanatory note accompanying the decree, the Vatican said it was willing, "like a caring mother," to welcome any SSPX faithful back into the fold. But it didn't create any specific Vatican entity to receive them, only decreeing that Vatican ambassadors around the world would establish procedures for local bishops to follow.
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 and were surprised by the harshness. Luigi Casalini, of the blog Messa in Latino, said the excommunication of the bishops was correct because canon law provides for it. But the excommunications of SSPX priests and faithful was "an act of unusual severity" and the invalidation of SSPX sacraments was problematic. In his homily Wednesday, SSPX superior Rev. Davide Pagliarani insisted the consecrations served the church. "We are accused of not respecting the pope," Pagliarani said. "But it is precisely because we love the pope as the vicar of Christ ... that we don't want to see the pope humiliated anymore, on the side of false shepherds representing false religions."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
