BEYOND THE LEONINE

Countdown to Catholic Schism

What does it teach us?

Photo by Julia Michelle on Unsplash

The countdown has begun.

On July 1st, the Society of Saint Pius X, a Catholic schismatic group, will ordain four new bishops without a papal mandate. This is prohibited by Canon Law which requires that — with very few exceptions — every episcopal consecration in the Catholic Church obtain prior approval from the pope (cf. canon 1013).

The story of the Society of Saint Pius X — commonly known as the SSPX — and its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church is long and complex. Some readers will be more familiar with it than I. But at least I can offer the perspective of someone who assisted the late Benedict XVI in the preparation and formulation of *Summorum Pontificum, the Motu Proprio *that Benedict hoped would bridge the divide between the SSPX and the Roman Catholic Church.

The details must be left for another article, but for those unfamiliar with the story, Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum in 2007 to allow for a wider celebration of the Catholic Mass according to the norms and rubrics of the 1962 — or “pre-Vatican II” — Roman Missal. It permitted all priests to legitimately celebrate the older Mass (referred to as the usus antiquior or “Extraordinary Form”) either without a congregation, or with a congregation in accord with provisions of the local bishop and the appropriate authorities of the Roman Curia.

Benedict’s hope (and I say this as someone who was there to hear it) was that by acknowledging the legitimacy of the 1962 Missal, he would show how serious he was about mending the tear that occurred when the French prelate Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre ordained four priests to the episcopate without a papal mandate in 1988. Benedict lifted that excommunication via the Congregation for Bishops in 2009 in the hope that it would “be followed by the prompt attainment of full communion with the Church on the part of the whole Society of Saint Pius X, which will thus bear witness to its genuine fidelity and genuine recognition of the Magisterium and authority of the Pope by the proof of visible unity.”

That never happened, and it broke Benedict’s heart. I can personally attest that it only added to a series of grave disappointments that weighed heavily upon the German Pontiff’s heart and intensified his discernment about whether to step aside.

Immediately after he repealed the excommunication of the four ordained SSPX bishops, a firestorm broke out. A Swedish television network decided to broadcast an interview with one of the four bishops, Richard Williamson (who died last year), in which he effectively denied the Holocaust.

Pope Benedict was so shaken by this turn of events that he sat down and handwrote a personal letter to all bishops (a rare form of communication in the Catholic Church) expressing his apology that the Holy See had not consulted the internet to uncover the reprehensible claims of Bishop Williamson (n.b.: we his secretaries had indeed made such a consultation but, in turn, were not sufficiently consulted ourselves).

Benedict then shared some of the most poignant words of his pontificate. Voicing dismay at the visceral opposition some bishops had expressed against his attempt to reconcile with the SSPX, he wrote:

“Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who ‘has something against you’ (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? … Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? … Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church?”

In short, Benedict was desperately yearning for reconciliation with a remnant he considered anything but a “radical fringe” and therefore entirely capable of “reconciliation and unity.”

As July 1st approaches, it is Pope Leo XIV’s sincere hope and that of the entire Church that Pope Benedict’s efforts were not in vain. Much has happened since Summorum Pontificum, including the unfortunate publication of *Traditionis Custodes by Pope Francis in 2021 which placed heavy and unnecessary restrictions on the Latin Mass, further breaking Benedict’s heart, who by that time was living quietly as Pope Emeritus within the Vatican walls. Leaving aside the specific criticisms of Traditionis Custodes*, suffice it to say that it did not help advance the reconciliation Benedict had worked so assiduously for.

Now we are on the brink of returning to step one. The 2009 lifting of excommunications has slid into a warning of more to come. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has unequivocally stated that if the SSPX proceeds with the ordinations, it will have committed “‘a schismatic act’ (John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei, no. 3) and ‘formal adherence to the schism” will constitute “a grave offence against God and entails the excommunication established under Church law’ (*ibid., 5c; cf. Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Explanatory Note*, 24 August 1996).” In off-the-cuff remarks made to reporters in Castel Gandolfo last week, Pope Leo XVI issued a plea to the SSPX leadership: “‘Do not do this! Let us try to live in the Church.’ But” he added, “it is their choice. They must understand what it means for them and for the Church.”

To understand what it means for the SSPX and for the Church, we need to turn to the Declaration of Catholic Faith Addressed to Pope Leo XIV issued by SSPX Superior General Davide Pagliarani, in which he expresses “the minimum indispensable (sic) to be in communion with the Church, and to truly call ourselves Catholics and, consequently, your sons.”

If you are Catholic, I encourage you to read the Declaration and determine for yourself whether you think it corresponds to — or can correspond to — orthodox Catholic teaching. As a disciple of Joseph Ratzinger, I am holding out hope that it can, though I have doubts whether it will.

Catholic commentator George Weigel draws attention to two particular items in the Declaration that he believes prove the SSPX “does not share the faith of the Catholic Church.” Let’s consider the first.

Pagliarani states that: “Our Lord Jesus Christ … rendered the Old Covenant definitively null and void.” Relying on Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Weigel understands Pagliarani to suggest that God repents of his promises (something, of course, that God cannot do) and to deny that “the Old and New Testaments form a unity.”

I don’t think it’s entirely clear Pagliarani does either. There’s a distinction between “Testament” as it refers to a set of canonically acceptable books in the Bible and “Covenant” as a relationship between God and his people, though the two are certainly related. Pagliarani is clearly not claiming that the “Old Testament” in the first sense is “null and void.” And while citing Romans 8, Weigel overlooks Hebrews 8, which focuses on the second sense and asserts that the prophet Jeremiah, “by speaking of a New Covenant … has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear” (cf. Hebrews 8:7–13). The note in the New American Bible is informative:

Since the first covenant was deficient in accomplishing what it signified, it had to be replaced (Heb 8:7), as Jeremiah (Jer 31:31–34) had prophesied (Heb 8:8–12). Even in the time of Jeremiah, the first covenant was antiquated (Heb 8:13). In Heb 7:22–24, the superiority of the new covenant was seen in the permanence of its priesthood; here the superiority is based on better promises, made explicit in the citation of Jer 31:31–34 (LXX: 38), namely, in the immediacy of the people’s knowledge of God (Heb 8:11) and in the forgiveness of sin (Heb 8:12).

At the very least, we shouldn’t write off Pagliarini’s claim about the Old Covenant as unequivocally contrary to the Catholic faith. I think Pope Benedict would agree. Weigel is right to suggest that the Old and New Testaments — i.e., the respective sets of canonical books in the Bible — form a certain unity as part of a single divine revelation, but that is a different — albeit related — point.

As for the Old Covenant, Vatican II teaches that it prepared the Church “in a remarkable way throughout the history of the people of Israel” (Lumen Gentium, 2). “All the things” of the Old Covenant “were done by way of preparation and as a figure of the new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation which was to be given through the Word of God Himself made flesh” (Lumen Gentium, 9).

Nowhere does the Council explicitly teach that the Old Covenant was made “null and void,” but Lumen Gentium indeed relies heavily on the passage from Jeremiah treated above, which states that “the days shall come” when the Lord will “make a new covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah,” for he will give his law “in their bowels” and “write it in the heart” (Jer. 31:31–34).

Lumen Gentium comments:

“Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in His Blood, calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God, not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people . . . who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God’” (Lumen Gentium, 9).

That’s not to say that the passage from the Letter to the Romans cited by Weigel was unimportant at Vatican II. But it’s importance has more to do with relations between the Catholic Church and non-Christian religions (specifically the Jewish people), which is the topic of Nostra Aetate, rather than ecclesiology and soteriology, which is the topic of Lumen Gentium. If we look at Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate together, it is highly dubious — though not impossible — to say in some tenuous way that the Old Covenant was made “null and void” due to the surpassing fullness and definitiveness of the New. That, it seems to me, is a valid point of theological discussion.

Many will blame me for being overly generous in my interpretation of Pagliarani’s claim about the Old Covenant. But you can see how much I want to rely on Benedict XVI’s utter conviction that dogmatic unity is possible between the SSPX and the Roman Catholic Church.

Things may have changed, but while I was working at the Holy See, we were always on the level of “schism” and not “heresy” when in conversation with representatives of the SSPX. Truth be told, hardly anything was more frustrating in my work at the Holy See than those conversations, but I am still willing to suggest that it is not impossible for Rome and the SSPX to sit down at a table with Pagliarani’s Declaration and the documents of Vatican II in hand and hammer out some common theological understanding that would fall under the umbrella of orthodox Catholic teaching, even allowing for subtle nuances in respective theological understandings. Call me naïve, but I am willing to risk naivety by sticking with Ratzinger on the possibility of reconciliation.

The threat of the imminent schism teaches us that, if we have the patience to listen, study, and pray, we can arrive at deeper theological insights and a firmer grasp of what we believe precisely by engaging those who — as Ratzinger taught — presumably hold the same faith.

The larger point, of course, is the willingness of the SSPX to submit herself obediently to papal authority and the overall authority of the Second Vatican Council. But that will have to wait for another article (as will Pagliarani’s claim that “every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul”).

And hopefully, those will come after the SSPX decides to cancel the planned episcopal ordinations.

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