The Écône Consecrations: A House Divided
The excommunication of the Society of Saint Pius X has revealed what traditionalists and progressives hold in common — a belief in the “hermeneutic of rupture” rather than the continuity of Rome.
A tragic week draws to a close for the Catholic world. The first tragedy is that many of the faithful will not see it as one.
Following the illicit consecration of four bishops by the Society of Saint Pius X in Écône, Switzerland, and the excommunications that followed, reactions have divided sharply along ancient trench lines. That they have taken this shape at all shows that the Church was already spiritually torn before the “schismatic act” — the very act against which Pope Leo XIV had personally warned as recently as 29 June. Christendom is a mystical body whose head is Christ, and every form of division within it stands against the will of God. It is to be mourned. That much should be common ground. Anyone who denies or downplays such divisions is refusing to grasp that the great accuser and sower of confusion is making his rounds here.
But even that basic principle has little purchase at the moment. On social media, narratives are traded at the level of the pews: the pope is accused of heresy or apostasy while the opposing camp celebrates that the Society has “overplayed its hand.” Others deny the schism outright. Facebook posts from SSPX chapels have been circulating in which it is claimed that nothing changes — that confessions will still be heard — although Rome has explicitly forbidden this, just as it did the consecrations.
One might dismiss such things as internet phenomena. They have long since found their way into published commentary. At LifeSiteNews, one now reads that Leo cannot excommunicate the SSPX because he himself is a heretic. The German portal katholisch.de has run several commentary pieces suggesting that it is not so bad after all if the “Pharisees” finally make themselves scarce. A Jesuit contributor mocks the consecrations and declares that this is not “his” Church.
And here again the thread that runs through the whole reception: it is no longer about the Church of Christ, but about whether it is “one’s own” Church. As in politics, the operating frame is no longer the common house under which all gather, but a “house divided”. This is a strange thing for a Catholic — meaning universal — Church that has for centuries held the most diverse forms of spiritual life under a single roof. She has produced saints as different as Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Marie Vianney and Irenaeus of Lyon, Ignatius of Loyola and Philip Neri, Teresa of Ávila and Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Martin of Tours.
For centuries such differences were regarded as a source of richness. Today they appear as a problem — because the Church is no longer perceived as something given, but as an “idea.” The ideological politicisation of the last two centuries has left its mark here too: the Church is not accepted as she is, but as she ought to be. The same impulse marked the Lutheran Reformation, driven by intellectuals implementing their “idea” of the Church, one they meant to rebuild from scripture alone. That traditions have a history and a place, that they develop over centuries, that they too were once “invented” — this struck the masters of the letter as a heretical detour.
Lefebvre’s Long Shadow
Tradition, and the interpretation of tradition, thus plays a key role in the present conflict. Ever since the Society was founded, the flashpoint has been the traditional Latin Mass. That the old rite survives at all is due largely to the Society’s founder, Marcel Lefebvre. The institutes and fraternities in full communion with Rome that today enjoy the use of the 1962 Missal exist chiefly because Rome had to make concessions in its conflict with the traditionalists. Had the SSPX remained the sole guardian of the TLM, the Society would have stayed a central gathering point for conservative Catholics — one capable of causing Rome serious difficulty. The offer of the old rite was, and remains, a means of weakening the Society. The existence of the Society, in turn, is precisely what keeps celebration of that rite permitted for the groups aligned with Rome. In this sense Lefebvre — despite the excommunication that followed his first illicit consecrations in 1988 — has had a decisive hand in the spiritual life of the very Catholics who can now attend the extraordinary form without impediment.
The Real Rupture Is No Longer the Mass
Because of these provisions, the dispute over the old Mass no longer sits at the centre, as perhaps it still did in 1988. The Catholic philosopher Sebastian Ostritsch has made what is probably the most important observation on this point. He draws attention to a letter from the SSPX to the cardinals in which it is insinuated that the Roman Church has fallen away from the Catholic faith. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has called this “scandalous.”
The central knot in the dispute between Rome and the Society is therefore full acceptance of the last Council. But that is only one side of it, because the SSPX and the progressives agree on a single decisive point: both see the Council as a rupture. Where the SSPX reads the Second Vatican Council as an ending, progressive forces read it as a beginning. The hermeneutic of rupture has, in both camps, prevailed over the hermeneutic of continuity — the mediating position for which Benedict XVI stood. That the reading of the Council as rupture has won the day, consciously or not, shows that Ratzinger’s work of reconciliation has largely, if not entirely, failed. Even in the more moderate camps, the interpretation is spreading.
So in the reading of tradition itself, a narrative is at work on both sides. Where the traditionalists hold up the traditions from before the Council, the “new” traditions of the last sixty years are called into doubt. Tradition is understood not as growing, and therefore organic, but as sterile and static. Yet many traditions reach back to the Middle Ages — Ash Wednesday and the feast of Corpus Christi among them. In their own time they too were “new.” The Church has for centuries sought fresh forms and expressions, again and again, to rediscover the faith and to preach it in the world. Yet many of the expressions that have arisen since the Second Vatican Council are dismissed out of hand, merely because they are bound up with it. After more than half a century, they have themselves become “traditions” for the younger generations. A puritanical impulse shows itself here.
Magnifica Humanitas: The Encyclical That Almost Said No
The first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV has already generated considerable discussion on the very day of its publication, and, as usual, the media seem divided between popesplainers who defend every word of the encyclical tooth and nail, and the familiar critics who accuse the text of either too much or too little dogmatism, depending on whether the criticism comes from traditionalist or anti-clerical circles. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the text itself was written with the help of AI — a claim for which there is very little concrete evidence, but which is nevertheless interesting insofar as it points to the impersonal, almost detached character of the writing, a point to which we shall return later.
A Puritanism in Reverse
The doctrinal teaching of the Second Vatican Council is a matter apart. Here the Curia stands on the ground of a hermeneutic of continuity and regards the whole body of documents as a continuation of Christian teaching. Ostritsch cites in this connection John XXIII and his opening address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia: “The greatest concern of the ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more effectively.”
The progressives’ understanding of tradition and doctrine thus stands close to that of the SSPX, with one difference: they hold every teaching and tradition before Vatican II to be void — indeed, they see the whole of church history before the Council in the same darkness the SSPX reserves for the years after it. Put pointedly: the SSPX does not accept the Second Vatican Council, while some German churchmen in particular fall under the suspicion of accepting none of the councils before it. A diffuse “spirit of the Council” stands godfather to progressive-relativist dreams that would reduce the Una Sancta to a general store of personal sentimentalities.
German prelates have not, admittedly, carried out illicit episcopal consecrations. But on questions such as blessings for same-sex couples, they have repeatedly disregarded direct instructions from Rome. The disobedience springs from the same source as the Society’s: the conviction that one knows better than the pope, and that one represents the true Christendom. The charge of sectarianism, so eagerly laid at the Society’s door, applies just as well to this milieu. A spiritual schism already underlies the acts. The Pharisee-accusations flung at the community Lefebvre founded come back, in this sense, as a boomerang.
The Last Mass Has Not Yet Been Said
The severity with which Rome struck on 2 July cannot obscure the fact that not only Cardinal Müller but Cardinals Parolin and Koch too have pointed to paths by which the SSPX might return to full communion. Unlike in certain progressive quarters, Rome understands that the Society is not going to vanish — and that it maps a real strand of Catholic life. The attempt to fence it in through the excommunications of 1988 failed forty years ago. The SSPX milieu has proved surprisingly resilient in the decades since.
Harder still is that the older generation around Lefebvre, which still stood in some direct relation to Rome, has now died out. The younger generation knows only the semi-schismatic state. Absent integration, the hardliners will soon hold the upper hand. Rome must know this. Dialogue has therefore to be kept up — as Cardinal Secretary of State Parolin has stressed — if the tablecloth is not to be torn clean in two. Pope Leo XIV came forward as a reconciler; in his letter of admonition on 29 June, he shows himself paternal still.
The last Mass has not yet been said.
Leo XIV: The Return to Normal?
If we are to believe a recent report from The Free Press, in January 2026 a senior Trump official allegedly bullied and lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador, and even threatened to deploy American military forces against the Vatican if the latter did not cease interfering with the President’s political choices. Whether this report reflects mere rumour or documents a true story may perhaps never be known; however, what seems evident is that Pope Leo XIV has managed to become an important, respected, and apparently feared force in world politics—something few observers might have expected last year.
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now that SSPX are distinct from Rome, they can pursue an ecumenical union
In an ever-globalizing world, will the demands of progressive-relativism reduce a future holy church into a permissive structure where an expanding list personal desires are sanctioned as therapeutic moralities.