Members of rebel Catholic group in schism, excommunicated: Vatican

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said on July 2 that priests and lay Catholics who are part of a breakaway right-wing Catholic group that ordained bishops without Pope Leo’s approval are in schism with the wider Church and now excommunicated.

In a strong decree, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the top watchdog authority for the 1.4-billion-member Church, also warned Catholics globally that the Swiss-based Society of St Pius X now celebrates the sacraments illicitly.

The ultra-traditionalist group, which denies key Church teachings, cannot officiate marriages or hear confessions validly, the decree said.

It is a strict teaching of the Church that only the Pope can authorise the consecration of new bishops, in order to maintain the Church’s ties to Jesus’ 12 apostles, who are considered the first priests and bishops.

One member of the group, who said he was not authorised to speak but identified himself as Father Benedict, told Reuters after a mass in Econe, Switzerland, he expected the group would just continue on as before.

“We (will) just keep going,” he said. “We do respect the Pope. We will keep praying for him.”

He also criticised the Vatican’s response. “This sanction shows that, I mean, we did not close the door to the Holy Father, to the Holy See,” Benedict added. “They shut it in our face. So that’s the sad reality.”

Vatican decree goes further than expected

The Church considers unauthorised ordination of bishops as so serious that it causes those taking part in the ceremony to be automatically excommunicated, or “out of communion” with the wider Church, and unable to receive sacraments until they repent and ask for forgiveness.

The July 2 decree said the two bishops leading the unauthorised ordination, held in Switzerland on July 1, had been excommunicated, along with the four priests who had become new bishops, which was widely expected.

However, the Vatican went further than expected and said that all priests of the Society of St Pius X and all Catholics who “adhere formally” to the group were now in schism and excommunicated.

A schism is a term to indicate a severe, formal rupture inside the Catholic community.

The Society of St Pius X denies the central teachings of the Second Vatican Council, a landmark Vatican gathering of bishops in the 1960s that pursued a range of reforms for the global Church and sought to repair its relations with Jews and other Christian denominations.

The Council also allowed for the Mass, until then said only in Latin, to be celebrated in local languages. The society rejected that change, citing a desire for the Latin rite’s sense of mystery and formality.

Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the papacy, told Reuters that Leo believed very firmly in the reforms of the Council, often referred to by Catholics as “Vatican II”.

“He has no regrets, no doubts about the fact that this is the Church of Vatican II,” said Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University, outside Philadelphia. “He has shown that he doesn’t want to compromise on that.”

Leo told journalists in June that the divisions with the Society of St Pius X were “painful” but called the reforms of Vatican II “fundamental elements” of Church teaching. “We must move forward,” the Pope said.

The society, whose followers are sometimes known as Lefebvrists after their founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, says it counts 733 priests worldwide. Its leadership, which has long had tense relations with the Vatican, says it needed to ordain new bishops to have enough prelates to lead the group.

Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988 after ⁠ordaining four bishops without permission from then Pope John Paul II. Benedict XVI, John Paul’s successor, sought to renew dialogue with the society and lifted four remaining excommunications. REUTERS