A Survey of the Best Writing on the SSPX Situation

I have been quiet about the Society of St. Pius X for some time because, on a practical level, during Lent I went off of social media where the discussion has been energetically pursued, but, more importantly, on a theoretical level, because I wanted to watch, read, ponder, and arrive at clearer ideas without rushing into immediate reactions to this or that perspective.

Yves Chiron, in his magisterial work Between Rome and Rebellion: A History of Catholic Traditionalism with Special Attention to France (Angelico, 2024), tells us about the reaction of a key lay writer in France in 1988:

Jean Madiran, one of the most trusted voices in traditionalism at the time, was unwilling to take a public stand for or against the consecrations before the event. In the newspaper Présent, he published press releases and statements both from those in favor of the consecrations and from those opposed. This was not a refusal to choose, but a more general view of the situation. He did not want “the whole religious problem to be reduced to [this] single question. . . . The decisive question remains that of the Mass, the catechism, the traditional version and interpretation of Scripture.” (324)

Jean Madiran deliberately refrained from giving his own view because he believed it was more important for him to continue to be a simple apologist for Catholic tradition and the traditional Latin Mass wherever and whenever they existed. In other words, he wished to avoid being pegged as “exclusively” a supporter of this or that group within the broad traditionalist movement.

For the same reason, I, too, have no intention of coming down publicly for or against the SSPX consecrations in July.

That is not because I do not think the matter is of grave importance. On the contrary, I take this approach because I perceive the enormous complexity of the situation as seen from various angles, and because I have great respect and love for people on both sides of the divide. Indeed, I have good friends within the Society as well as good friends who are utterly anti-Society, and I am genuinely sympathetic to them all, for I see the valid points each one raises, the compelling arguments they offer, the contrary conclusions they reach, with evident good will and love for the Faith.

The only people for whom I have little patience are those who think it’s an obvious and tidy business one way or the other—who do not have even the slightest sense of anguish or doubt or dismay; those who, with authoritarian rigorism, simply want the Holy See to crush the Society with thunderous anathemas and banish them to the outer darkness, or, on the contrary, those who have already written off Leo XIV and the entirety of the Vatican as unregenerate Modernists, blasphemous idolaters, homosexual mafiosi, or what have you.

No, reality doesn’t fit into such cartoon boxes.

I have never made an attempt to hide my support of the Society chapels as a place of refuge for those who have no other Latin Mass option within reasonable driving distance. Thus, back in 2019, I published “Is It Ever Okay to Take Shelter in an SSPX Mass?” at OnePeterFive, an article that has been read tens of thousands of times. Another popular article of mine, at my Substack, is called “On the SSPX and the Situation of Catholics ‘in the Trenches,’” which was later developed into a chapter of my book Bound by Truth: Authority, Obedience, Tradition, and the Common Good (Angelico, 2023).

Yet neither have I made any attempt to disguise my clear preference for Ecclesia Dei institutes that work together with the diocesan structures—I have lived near and attended both ICKSP and FSSP parishes—and I reject the claim that these institutes have had to make fatal compromises in order to retain and transmit traditional liturgy, discipline, and doctrine.

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