Please turn back’

Q: Archbishop J, why excommunication?

Part One of Three

On June 29, the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul, Pope Leo XIV sat down to write a letter he must have hoped would never be needed. It was addressed to Fr Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)—the traditionalist priestly society founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Much of the letter is formal: the Pope explaining why the Society must not consecrate bishops without his mandate. Then, near the end, the formality gives way: “I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!”

He did not turn back. Two days later, on July 1, at the Society’s seminary at Écône in Switzerland, four priests were consecrated bishops without the mandate of the Roman Pontiff.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that the consecrating bishops and those consecrated had incurred excommunication. It happened 38 years after Archbishop Lefebvre’s unauthorised consecration of four bishops in 1988.

I want to reflect on this over three weeks. Let us begin, not with the rupture, but with everything done to prevent it.

What Rome did before declaring schism

The Society announced its intention to consecrate new bishops on February 2. Rome responded immediately.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández invited Fr Pagliarani to Rome, and they met on February 12. The Dicastery proposed a structured theological dialogue to identify what full communion would require and to find a canonical solution for the Society. It asked that the proposed consecrations be suspended while those conversations took place.

Fr Pagliarani replied on February 18. He did not reject theological dialogue altogether; indeed, he said such discussion remained desirable and useful. But he rejected the purpose and conditions proposed by Rome. He maintained that the parties already knew they could not agree on fundamental questions arising from the Second Vatican Council, and he refused to allow the dialogue to determine whether the consecrations would proceed. The date of July 1 would stand.

Rome continued trying. On May 13, the Dicastery formally warned that proceeding would constitute a schismatic act. On June 16, Pope Leo spoke sorrowfully about the threatened rupture. Then, on the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, he appealed directly to the Society, saying that to tear the seamless garment of Christ is “a sin of extreme gravity.”

Seventeen years of concessions

Here is the part many people do not know. In January 2009, Pope Benedict XVI remitted the excommunications of the four surviving bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. Excommunication is not a door locked from the outside. It is medicine, not a verdict, and the Church lifts it the moment she can.

That did not regularise the Society; its bishops and priests still lacked ordinary canonical standing. But Rome continued searching for ways to protect the spiritual good of the faithful.

Confession ordinarily requires more than priestly ordination. A priest must also possess the faculty to absolve. Marriage involving Catholics must ordinarily be celebrated in canonical form, before an authorised priest or deacon and two witnesses.

During the Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis granted SSPX priests the faculty to absolve validly and licitly. In 2016, he extended that provision beyond the Jubilee. In 2017, the Holy See provided a way for local bishops to authorise valid and licit marriages involving the Society’s faithful.

Neither provision required the Society to accept first a new doctrinal formula. Rome acted so that ordinary families approaching these priests would not find their sins unforgiven or their marriage void through no fault of their own.

That pastoral provision has now been withdrawn. Outside the exceptional circumstances recognised by canon law (most obviously absolution in danger of death), SSPX priests can no longer validly absolve or validly assist at Catholic marriages.

The same Note also set out, a way back. This is not a Church guarding its position. It is a Church trying, even amid profound disagreement, to prevent the innocent from bearing the consequences.

What was actually being asked

It is easy to imagine that Rome demanded unconditional surrender; 17 years of concessions suggest otherwise. The Society was asked not to create bishops unilaterally, but to receive the episcopal ministry in communion with the Roman Pontiff and allow dialogue to determine a canonical future. The Church did not close the door on this family; the family walked out while the door was being held open.

This grieves me because many among them plainly love the Mass and have made real sacrifices for what they believe. Many of their faithful pray the Rosary, raise their children in the faith and practise forms of devotion and self-denial that deserve recognition. That is a great deal, and it is why the rupture wounds so deeply.

Why this is not a foreign story

We might file this under European news—a Swiss village, a French archbishop long dead, a quarrel among strangers. We should not.

What happened at Écône is the most organised form of an instinct that can live in every parish, including ours: I will keep the sacraments, but not the Church. I will receive from the altar, but reserve to myself the final authority to decide what the Church may teach me.

You have met it. So have I. It is in the man who will drive an hour for a reverent Mass but will not hear a word from his bishop. It is in the parishioner who receives Holy Communion every Sunday while quietly deciding that one article of the Creed—or one moral teaching of the Church—simply no longer applies.

This is not the same as struggling with a teaching, asking honest questions, or failing through human weakness. It arises when communion itself becomes optional.

There are also chapels in our region, including in this country, that go further than the Society and teach that there is no legitimate Pope. I will address that movement, and the pastoral situation of those attending such chapels, in the third week.

Communion is not a technicality

Underneath all this lies a question: what is the Church? If the Church merely supplies religious goods, communion becomes a formality. All that matters is whether the Mass is technically valid.

But the Church is not a supermarket, and the Eucharist is not a private spiritual possession. The Eucharist makes the Church. We do not simply receive Christ individually; in receiving Him, we are incorporated more deeply into His Body.

St Paul says: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.” St Ignatius of Antioch taught the Christians of Smyrna to recognise as assured the Eucharist celebrated under the bishop or someone authorised by him.

The tragedy is precise: the Eucharist the Society seeks to preserve is itself the Sacrament of the Communion that its action has ruptured.

This is why Pope Leo invoked Christ’s seamless garment. At the foot of the Cross, the soldiers divided Jesus’ clothing, but the tunic was woven in one piece from top to bottom. “Let us not tear it,” they said, “but cast lots for it.”

They would not tear it. We have.

Key Message:

Communion is not a technicality that can be set aside while we retain the sacraments. The Eucharist makes the Church; a Mass offered in separation contradicts the unity it signifies and brings about division.

Action Step:

This week, name one teaching of the Church you have quietly decided does not apply to you. Take it to prayer. If the matter is serious, take it to Confession.

Scripture for Reflection:

“Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be’.”

— Jn 19:23–24

Next: What Jesus actually built—and whether it was ever the kind of thing that could change. The answer turns on a single verse in Isaiah.