The SSPX is now on a clear and direct collision course with Rome

The Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Fr. Davide Pagliarani, has recently given a lengthy interview in which he lays out his case for why the Society is justified in defying Rome by ordaining new bishops this July without a papal mandate.

The interview is revealing insofar as Fr. Pagliarani reaffirms all the major arguments that have already been made with no indication of nuancing his views on any of the salient points.

Disregard for Pope Leo

Why revisit this tired and sad situation yet again? With the focus of late on the war with Iran and the alleged feud between Pope Leo and President Trump, the looming schism of the SSPX has faded from the news. But the SSPX issue is not going to go away, and it is clear in light of this interview that the Society has deliberately steered itself into a clear and direct collision course with Rome.

This latter point is the quiet part that the Society refuses to say out loud; to wit, that this is a confrontation of choice, of their own making, and that there was still time to avoid the conflict with the new pope. Instead, they have deliberately chosen the path of confrontation. After all, the Vatican under Leo had made no new aggressive moves toward the Society or made any negative public comments. Furthermore, Pope Leo had only been in office about ten months when the Society made its announcement about ordaining new bishops. Therefore, it is more than suspicious that the Society apparently decided it was pointless to wait and see what the new pope thought of the Society.

But why did they think it was pointless? Perhaps it is better to say that the Society decided that the views of the new pope were not pointless, but irrelevant. The Society discerned that Leo, no matter his views on the Society, was not going to be the strong-armed papal ruler they deem so necessary in order to restore “true Catholicism” and so decided to pull the Band-Aid off the scab and to make their full intentions clear. Pagliarani, in his interview, makes it clear that what is needed is another pope cut out of the mold of Pius X. Apparently, even Pius XII is a bit too squishy for him, which gives you some indication of the thoroughgoing dissociative mental state the Society is in.

Pagliarani is saying in effect that the Society does not care what the new pope thinks of it because Leo, in the Society’s estimation, is just one more iteration of the error-laced, heretical “Vatican II, Novus Ordo Church”. Thus, there is now no need to wait around for Rome to toss the SSPX some crumbs of tolerance since the Society views itself as more than an “alternative subculture” within the Church. Rather, it views itself as the true “Holy Remnant” of “true Catholicism” whose task has been given by “Providence” to save the Church from itself.

Pagliarani repeatedly refers to this “Providence” as a justification for the fractious ecclesial stance he is taking. There is not the slightest hint in the interview of ecclesial humility or, perhaps more importantly, of charity. The interview drips with victim status posturing, never hints at the possibility that they might be wrong, never squares the circle of how it is in any way a part of Catholic “tradition” to accuse an ecumenical council and several popes of teaching serious doctrinal error, and never addresses the sedevacantist elephant in the living room, which all of that implies.

A crisis too great for the Church?

Pagliarani justifies all of this by appealing to the same tired narrative that the Church of today—ever since Vatican II—is in a crisis so deep that average souls are in real danger of going to Hell because the Church has fallen into error. But he never provides a coherent set of criteria for determining when an ecclesial crisis is so deep that it requires the creation of a parallel episcopacy in defiance of Rome and devoted to a restorationist agenda, the contours of which are defined by the Society itself.

What we see is that the Society, based on its own private theological opinions about what constitutes true Catholicism—in order to imbue those opinions with the patina of Providence and to justify its rupture with the tradition’s affirmation of papal authority—has invented the scenario of a Church in the crisis of an apostasy so deep that there can be no fixing it short of rebellion. No mention is made of why God has apparently and rather suddenly abandoned the pope and the episcopacy. And no mention is made either of why, exactly, we are to assume that the mantle of Providence has now fallen on the shoulders of the SSPX rather than on some other disgruntled faction of hyper restorationist land of super Catholics.

Yes, the Church does indeed have major problems today. I have written much about those problems and can in no way be accused of soft-pedaling the crisis at hand, which is, in my view, a crisis of a de facto atheism in the Church’s culture. Nevertheless, true Catholics understand that charity demands the realization that the answer is not to run away from the mainstream Church as a lost cause and into a Qumran-like compound of defiant apocalypticism, thus abandoning the very souls they claim so ardently to want to save.

Pagliarani repeats ad nauseam that the concerns of the SSPX are purely and simply for the salvation of souls. But it is not hard to see the purely rhetorical nature of such claims when the SSPX is advocating that those same souls accompany them into schism. The Society claims, of course, that it is not going into schism but that it is Rome that has already gone into schism, echoing the polemic of the most anti-Roman Orthodox firebrands one can imagine; “We did not break away!! Rome did first, and we are just where we always were!”

The fact remains that the Society’s claim to be concerned about saving souls rings hollow when, instead of staying within the canonical and doctrinal boundaries of the Church, it abandons that Church and the souls within it in the name of some kind of “purity”—a purity that would be tainted and diluted should they stay. That is not charity. It is rather an ideologically driven elimination of cognitive dissonance, as in the dissonance between their view of the tradition and the modern Church’s view of the same. This is done by dissolving one pole of the dissonance and creating an alternative society that, instead of active evangelization in ordinary parishes, will act as a flame that will, allegedly, attract those lost sheep stranded out in the cold pastures of Novus Ordo land.

The Society further asserts that its interpretation of the Tradition is the only correct one, in a manner all too reminiscent of every schismatic and heretical group in the history of the Church. By whose authority does the Society do this? By God’s authority? That is their claim. But that means God has apparently radically shifted directions, and the Holy Spirit, apparently absent from the Church since at least 1962, has instead landed like a dove on the heads of the SSPX. For reasons known only to God, the “rock” that is Peter is now instead a sponge that soaks up only what is in its cultural environment. The SSPX now claims, in a tacit manner that is logically within its theological assertions, that it is now the rock.

Insincerity and misplaced confidence

They say otherwise in their official pronouncements, of course, and even in Pagliarani’s interview, there are all kinds of unctuous formalisms at the beginning wherein he expresses his love and admiration for Rome. However, everything that follows these words of praise betrays the insincerity of such affirmations. Pagliarani comes across instead as a kind of Eddie Haskell with a cassock on, hiding his true feelings and motives underneath faux words of praise.

The truth is that the SSPX does indeed view itself as being on a “mission from God” as they seek to put the Baroque Catholic band back together again. And the further truth is that in claiming, repeatedly, the “Providential” nature of this mission, the Society is claiming it is now the rock upon which the salvation of the Church depends.

Pagliarani, of course, never mentions that there are former SSPX priests and bishops who have splintered off the Society because they view it as still too compromised by its putative desire for reconciliation with Rome. He dares not mention this because, being an intelligent man, he understands that this is the standard path taken by all schismatic movements, which are devoid of grounding beyond their own solipsistic claims to superior insights. Inevitably, others will arise who believe that the muse who imparts such privileged divine secrets has inspired them with even better divine secrets, and that the mother ship of the schism has floundered and needs to be abandoned for purer and safer waters.

Nevertheless, this does not trouble Fr. Pagliarani, who remains supremely confident that the SSPX movement is a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit and that it is therefore blessed by Providence with manifest success. As corroboration for this view, he alludes to statements made by Archbishop Lefebvre:

On another occasion, Archbishop Lefebvre declared, serenely and in a profoundly supernatural manner, that if the Society of Saint Pius X were not the work of God, it would not continue and would not survive him. It is not for us to provide an answer to this question. But history has already begun to pronounce itself.

But this “success as a sign of divine approval” argument is completely incoherent and is little more than a rhetorical fig leaf used to cover over the raw theological nakedness of the Society’s inflated claims for itself. It is an incoherent argument because its sole criterion of divine approval is perdurance over time with a requisite number of followers to sustain it.

But that proves too much because it could also be applied to the Old Catholics, Protestants, every Catholic schismatic movement in history that still exists today, and (irony of ironies!) to the “Vatican II Novus Ordo Church” whose death spiral has been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, the latest statistics say that there are 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, and that the number of SSPX adherents worldwide is around 800,000. It would seem that even by the logic of the SSPX, the greater Providential blessing still resides with the mainstream Church.

The fact is that many evil movements have arisen within the Church over 2000 years and have survived and even thrived for a time. There are many deceivers who have ravaged the flock of Christ (1 Jn 4:1-3), which is why every saint, every true mystic, every Doctor of the Church, every Church father, and every medieval scholastic theologian has warned against false teachers and the allure of schism. They have all warned us to stay close to Peter. They have stated that legitimate and respectful criticism of a pope is sometimes needed. But they all agree that the schismatic impulse is of Satan.

And there is no schismatic impulse more dangerous than among those who appeal to the need to “preserve tradition” by breaking away from the ecclesial leaders of the day. It is a seduction that appeals to the most devoted Catholics. As such, it is a deception of the devout.

Manipulation and confusion

And, as such, it represents a horrible manipulation of the confusion of many truly devout Catholics whose long-suffering perdurance through the malaise of milquetoast Catholicism is real and understandable. These are the rank-and-file Catholics who still believe, go to Mass, volunteer at their parish as needed, put money in the envelopes, and instill the faith in their children. Ecclesial sexual scandals, financial mismanagement, and LGBTQ+everything have eroded the peace of these good Catholics, who therefore are easily swayed by claims of an apostasy so great that one needs to go into schism to save the Church.

Should the Pope excommunicate the leadership of the SSPX, it should not be viewed as the persecution of the poor little “victim” that is the Society, but instead viewed as the imparting of the proper clarity needed to safeguard the little ones of the flock. It is not punitive but remedial.

And we have not even touched upon the horrible denigration of the many thousands of priests who are active in ministry today who are doing the Lord’s work in the vineyard, who are not heretics or apostates, but who work hard to administer the sacraments with due devotion, who are in hospital rooms at 2:00 a.m. administering the sacrament of the sick to dying Catholicd, who teach and preach with vigor, and who have given their whole lives to the Kingdom of God. And the number of such priests is not negligible.

But according to the SSPX, these priests are unwitting participants in the spiritually toxic ethos of the entire modern Church. They might be sincere, but they are dupes of the system and, at the end of the day, part of the problem. That is why the Society claims the need for new bishops of its own, not appointed by Rome. This is to maintain the independence necessary from Rome, in order to be able to ordain priests who are not tainted by Novus Ordo, the Vatican II heresy. Therefore, this denigration of the mainstream priesthood is part of the broader narrative of apostasy and crisis that requires the grave necessity of disobedience.

Pope Leo has remained thus far silent on the matter, content to allow Cardinal Fernandez to do all the heavy lifting. And this silence has been noticed by Fr. Pagliarani, who laments the fact that Pope Leo has shown no inclination to meet personally with the leaders of the Society to “dialogue” with them.

If I were Pope Leo, I would not “dialogue” with them either. And I don’t think he will. Therefore, the SSPX is going to get the confrontation they have manufactured and desired. That will be a sad day, as all schisms are sad. But, as Pagliarani has himself noted in the Society’s defense, their actions represent a “cruel necessity”.

Perhaps it is now time for Pope Leo to have recourse, however reluctantly, to the “cruel necessity” of excommunication in July. At this point, it seems inevitable.

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