The Vatican and the SSPX: repairing the damage—Part I

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 09, 2026

The worst has happened: the illicit ordinations, the excommunications, the schism. A fissure has appeared (or re-appeared, or widened) in the unity of the Catholic Church. Recriminations will not change the history nor repair the damage. What will?

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI offered some wise counsel for Church leaders facing such crises:

Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.

That advice came in a letter that Pope Benedict wrote to the world’s bishops in July 2007, accompanying the release of Summorum Pontificum, his effort to heal the wound that is now festering. That effort was abruptly ended, of course, when Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes five years ago.

In effectively reversing Summorum Pontificum, Pope Francis explained that he was acting for the sake of Church unity: the same goal that Pope Benedict had cited as the reason for his initiative. Having surveyed the world’s bishops, Pope Francis reported that tensions within the Church had been aggravated by the wider use of the traditional liturgy.

Thanks to the reporting of Diane Montagna, we now know that explanation was inaccurate. Most of the bishops did not report problems with the implementation of Pope Benedict’s directive. In fact an internal Vatican report concluded that “the majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire stated that making legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum would cause more harm than good.”

Several questions now arise. If most bishops were not troubled by the growth of traditionalism, why were there so few public objections to Traditionis Custodes? Why did those bishops who had advised against “legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum” remain silent when Pope Francis made those changes? Why did the cardinals, whose role it is to advise the Pontiff, not urge him to reconsider? Why did diocesan bishops quietly surrender their responsibility for appraising the pastoral needs of their own flocks? Did all those prelates fear the wrath of Pope Francis more than they valued the unity of the Church?

But again, recriminations will not repair the damage done. Our task now is to bring the two sides back together—or at a minimum, following the advice of Benedict XVI—to avoid a further hardening of the opposing stances.

To that end, those who lament the intransigence of the Society of St. Pius X (and I count myself among them) should be prepared to go the extra mile, assuming—perhaps even sometimes against the evidence—that the SSPX leaders are acting in good faith, motivated by what they perceive as the urgent needs of the Catholic faithful. The Vatican and the world’s bishops should discourage the controversialists who are in effect saying “good riddance” to traditionalists.

For their part, responsible SSPX leaders should do their best to tone down the incendiary rhetoric of some of their own followers—and for that matter, at least one of their newly ordained bishops. When Bishop Goldade preached that “the modernist Church is a desert that kills everything that it touches,” he fueled apprehensions that the SSPX has no real desire for communion with the Holy See. Why would the group want closer contact with a Church that kills what it touches?

Surely SSPX members should not rejoice over the rupture. Several traditionalist sources have reported that attendance at SSPX Masses has increased significantly since the excommunications. If accurate, those reports are troubling, Why would someone who had not already been attending Mass at SSPX chapels now join those congregations, if not to thumb their noses at the Vatican?

Because the decree of excommunication and the accompanying Note from Cardinal Fernandez were (or purported to be) documents with the force of law, some canon lawyers are now questioning the validity of the rulings. I would urge supporters of the SSPX to let the canonical appeals run their course, and not to base their own decisions too heavily on those canonical arguments, for three reasons:

1. The system of canon law is not the same as the Anglo-American legal system, and amateur canonists often make fundamental mistakes about the strength of different arguments.
2. Any canonical appeal will ultimately be decided by a Vatican tribunal; the field is heavily tilted to favor the home team.
3. A canonical dispute cannot resolve the real problem, which is the alienation of the SSPX from the Holy See. Even in the (highly unlikely) event that the excommunications were lifted, the status of the SSPX would remain irregular; the mutual suspicions would remain.

These are all negative suggestions: advice on what good Catholics should not do. In the 2nd part of this essay I shall explore what can be done, beginning with the indispensable first step: the reversal of Traditionis Custodes.