“Excommunicated? But By Whom?” The Dangerous Shift in SSPX Rhetoric
The Society’s latest declaration contains truths many Catholics instinctively recognise. That is precisely why the present moment is so dangerous.
The latest declaration issued by the Society of Saint Pius X in anticipation of its forthcoming episcopal consecrations is one of the most revealing documents to emerge from the traditionalist world in many years. It is also one of the most tragic.
I write this not as someone instinctively hostile to the SSPX, but as someone who has often had deep sympathy with many of its concerns. Over recent years I have written repeatedly about the doctrinal confusion, liturgical collapse and therapeutic ecclesial language which have so deeply wounded Catholic life in the modern West. I want the Church to recover the clarity, seriousness and transformative power of the Gospel rather than endlessly accommodating itself to the spirit of the age. In many respects, the SSPX diagnosis of the crisis is difficult to dismiss as I have expressed before.
Yet this latest phase of the controversy has also exposed something increasingly troubling. Beneath the language of fidelity and resistance there now appears, in some quarters at least, a growing tendency toward a mentality in which the Society begins to function not merely as a movement within the wounded life of the Church, but as a purer parallel reality standing over against it. This has long been my suspicion and now some of the rhetoric emerging from supporters has become especially alarming. Catholics who question the consecrations are increasingly treated as compromised, naïve or even effectively outside authentic Catholicism itself.
The danger of certain forms of siege mentality traditionalism is that they unintentionally reduce conversion to a kind of ideological threshold test. Yet the Catholic tradition has always understood that grace often begins operating long before full intellectual submission is achieved. Souls are frequently drawn toward the fullness of Catholic truth gradually, through partial recognitions, imperfect apprehensions and providential encounters. The Church has historically evangelised not by demanding immediate perfection, but by patiently elevating what is already true, good and ordered toward Christ within the human soul.
Predictably, reactions after this latest release have divided almost immediately into opposing camps. For some, the declaration is proof that the SSPX alone now preserves authentic Catholicism while Rome sinks deeper into doctrinal confusion and modernist collapse. Obviously in this regard, the latest nonsense from Synod Group 9 is an absolute gift! For others, it is little more than a rebellious manifesto dressed in pious language, the predictable rhetoric of a movement that has spent decades resisting ecclesiastical authority.
Neither interpretation adequately explains why this document matters. The real problem posed by the SSPX is not that everything they say is false. It is that much of what they say contains enough truth to persuade serious Catholics.
That is what makes the present situation so painful. The Society’s declaration is, in many respects, carefully constructed and rhetorically disciplined. It repeatedly affirms attachment to Rome, fidelity to the papacy, devotion to the Catholic priesthood and adherence to the perennial faith of the Church. The language is neither hysterical nor triumphalist. Rather, it presents the SSPX as reluctant custodians of continuity acting under extraordinary necessity for the salvation of souls.
Many Catholics reading the text will immediately recognise elements of the diagnosis. The collapse in Mass attendance across the West is undeniable. Catechetical confusion has devastated generations. Eucharistic belief has sharply declined. Liturgical banality has often displaced reverence. Entire episcopal conferences appear paralysed in the face of secular moral revolution. Meanwhile, some churchmen who openly challenge Catholic teaching seem to receive little more than polite tolerance, while traditional communities often encounter swift scrutiny and restriction.
To pretend these concerns are imaginary would itself be dishonest.
Indeed, part of the tragedy of the Francis era is that the Vatican frequently strengthened the SSPX narrative unintentionally. Traditiones Custodes, the suppression or marginalisation of traditional communities, doctrinal ambiguity surrounding moral theology and the increasingly selective appearance of ecclesiastical discipline all reinforced the perception among many Catholics that fidelity to tradition was being treated as a problem while theological experimentation was treated as dialogue.
This anger did not emerge from nowhere. Many Catholics were genuinely scandalised by episodes such as the Pachamama controversy during the Amazon Synod, the ambiguities surrounding Fiducia Supplicans and ecumenical gestures they believed blurred essential theological distinctions. The latest SSPX statement specifically states “Excommunicated? But by whom? By those who receive the blessing of a schismatic woman bishop, authorise Fiducia Supplicans and kneel before Pachamama?” — this reveals the depth of disillusionment many of us feel toward parts of the contemporary hierarchy.
One does not have to endorse such rhetoric to understand the frustration behind it. Yet herein lies the deeper danger.
