Despite the pleas of Pope Leo XIV and years of negotiations seeking a reconciliation, the Society of St. Pius X consecrated four new bishops on July 1 at their seminary in Écône, Switzerland. By so doing, the participants incurred upon themselves an excommunication latae sententiae as clarified by the Vatican the next day. The excommunication extends to all clergy of the society and to the laity who formally adhere to the schismatic group.
In his letter begging them not to go through with the consecrations, Leo advised them that doing so would constitute a “sin of extreme gravity.” Indeed it is.
We Catholics come in all shapes and sizes. There are conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics, observant Catholics and lapsed Catholics, wealthy Catholics and poor Catholics, Austrian Catholics and Zimbabwean Catholics. There is room for everybody within the church’s embrace. Except those who refuse the embrace.
It is not difficult to entertain sympathy for those who were attached to the old, pre-Vatican II rite and did not like the new Mass. It is easy to sympathize with young people today who find something transcendent in the old rite, the sense of continuity with the ages, the otherworldliness of a liturgy in a language no one speaks. Sympathy, too, for those young people who grow up in a traditionalist family and for whom the old rite is what they know.
We need have no sympathy for the men who permitted themselves to be consecrated nor those who performed the ritual in Écône. They should know better.
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Michael Sean Winters, where this article originally appeared.
