The SSPX Goes to Modernist Rome, The Ecumenical Zoo

Is there a side chapel for Tradition in the Conciliar Church?

Credit Catholic News Service X account.

Big news in Traddie-land: The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) was allowed to role play as the FSSP this week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Society held a pilgrimage in Rome where they processed through the “Holy Door” at St. John Lateran while offering a High Mass nearby. One wonders if they cursed themselves by walking through it.

Pro-SSPX influencer Nicholas Cavazos was ecstatic that Modernist usurper Leo approved the event.

“We are so back” he gleefully declared while praising Leo’s generosity.

Apparently being “back” means women running the Vatican, priestly blessings for homosexuals, and Latin Masses being canceled in Detroit and Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Catholic Esquire released a video Thursday summarizing Leo’s first 100 days. He kindly directed his viewers to read our own summary of what has been taking place in Rome. Click below to watch our take on the pilgrimage:

Many Trads seem to think this pilgrimage is a good and great thing. It shows the SSPX is “in communion” with the Church. This is the “most Catholic thing to happen in Rome in a long time,” Kennedy Hall has commented.

We think Chris Jackson has the better take:

“This is not a victory for Tradition, but an invitation to join the circus. In exchange for silence on Leo’s doctrinal betrayals, the SSPX gets a spot in the program; alongside the very movements it once condemned as incompatible with the Catholic faith. Inclusion is the price of admission; compromise is the cost of staying.”

‘The abnormal situation is in Rome’

Bishop Tissier giving a sermon in 2024. Credit SSPX Florida.

For the SSPX of old, the question was not whether they had the approval of the heretics running what Archbishop Lefebvre called “neo-Protestant Rome.” Rather, it was exposing the dissidents who are occupying the Vatican as not being in communion with their predecessors. In other words, their focus was letting Catholics know they were being governed by Modernists and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Bishop Tissier courageously spoke about this topic during a sermon in 2015. Below is a brief transcript of his remarks. One wonders if Cavazos or Hall are even aware His Excellency made these comments:

“Let us reject also the wrong supposition of some of our friends — bad friends — who say the Society of St. Pius X is now in an abnormal situation. Because we are not acknowledged by the church. The Society of St. Pius X must come back to a normal situation and receive a canonical status from Rome. That is wrong! That is false! We are not in an abnormal situation. The abnormal situation is in Rome! We possess the Faith, the Sacrament and the disposition to submit to the Pope. We have the Faith, the true Sacraments and the disposition of to obey the Pope! And the bishops. We are of the disposition. We are not in an abnormal situation. The abnormal situation is in Rome, now! We have not to come back! These people in Rome have to come back, to Tradition. Let us not reverse the reality. We have not to come back. But these Romans have to come back to their Tradition. To the Tradition of the Church.”

You can listen to the rest of His Excellency’s remarks — which were made on New Years Day in 2015 — below:

‘Why not join with Rome?’

Liberalism redirects the focus away from the object and towards the subject. What do we mean by this? In essence, liberalism makes the creature instead of the Creator the cornerstone of reality. This is why liberals speak of the right or freedom for persons to do this or that.

This explains why Liberal Catholics in the 1800s demanded, “a free Church in a free State.” The liberal Founders of the United States likewise declared citizens had the right to freedom of speech and religion.

Anti-liberals rejected these propositions. They spoke of how “error has no rights” and of how the state has a duty to pay a debt to God by recognizing the Catholic religion.

The relevant question we must now ask is: Does the SSPX speak like this?

Sadly, no. Not anymore.

Astute observers of SSPX history are aware that over the past 15 years the SSPX has opted to repeatedly talk about “the rights of Tradition” and of the need for Rome to “allow the experiment of Tradition” to continue.

One often heard this when Bishop Fellay was pushing his hardest for the SSPX to become a personal prelature under Benedict.

Another common argument used by the SSPX in the early 2010s was that it was “a matter of justice” that its canonical status be rectified, as it had been unfairly taken away from them by the Vatican in the 1970s.

I was one of the only Trads at the time to publicly note the liberal nature of these arguments. Click here to read what I had to say about them in 2016.

‘No dialogue is possible’

Archbishop Lefebvre was aware of the temptation to think like a liberal. While he undoubtedly sought a deal with the Vatican in the 1980s, he ultimately decided against it. He came to see that the situation he was in was same as the great anti-liberals in the 19th century. His remarks below (given in an interview conducted in 1990) act as a reminder for the SSPX to return to its previous anti-liberalism and declare that “Modernist errors have no right” to reign in the Vatican, while also calling on the Conciliar authorities to recognize the duty that have to uphold Traditional Catholicism:

In the last few weeks (since I am now unemployed!) I have been spending a little time re-reading the book by Emmanuel Barbier on Liberal Catholicism. And it is striking to see how our fight now is exactly the same fight as was being fought then by the great Catholics of the 19th century, in the wake of the French Revolution, and by the Popes, Pius VI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and so on, Pius X, down to Pius XII. Their fight is summed up in the encyclical Quanta Cura with the Syllabus of Pius IX, and Pascendi Dominici Gregis of Pius X. There are the two great documents, sensational and shocking in their day, laying out the Church's teaching in face of the modern errors, the errors appearing in the course of the Revolution, especially in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This is the fight we are in the middle of today. Exactly the same fight.

We stand exactly where Cardinal Pie, Bishop Freppel, Louis Vueillot stood, and Deputy Keller in Alsace, Cardinal Mermillod in Switzerland, who fought the good fight together with the great majority of the then bishops … But obviously there were the forces of the Revolution, the heirs of the Revolution, and there was the hand reached out by Dupanloup, Montalembert, Lamennais and others, who offered their hand to the Revolution and who never wanted to invoke the rights of God against the rights of man — ‘We ask only for the rights of every man, the rights shared by everyone, shared by all men, shared by all religions, not the rights of God,’ said these Liberals.

Well, we find ourselves in the same situation. We must not be under any illusions. Consequently we are in the thick of a great fight, a great fight. We are fighting a fight guaranteed by a whole line of popes. Hence, we should have no hesitation or fear, hesitation such as, "Why should we be going on our own? After all, why not join Rome, why not join the pope?" Yes, if Rome and the Pope were in line with Tradition, if they were carrying on the work of all the Popes of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, of course. But they themselves admit that they have set out on a new path. They themselves admit that a new era began with Vatican II. They admit that it is a new stage in the Church's life, wholly new, based on new principles. We need not argue the point. They say it themselves. It is clear. I think that we must drive this point home with our people, in such a way that they realize their oneness with the Church's whole history, going back well beyond the Revolution. Of course. It is the fight of the City of Satan against the City of God. Clearly. So we do not have to worry. We must after all trust in the grace of God.

This is precisely what those who view this pilgrimage favorably fail to understand. The focus should not so much be on “the freedom of Tradition” or on having Leo allow a “free SSPX in a free Conciliar Church.” It must be on the duty of Rome to recognize Tradition and the Kingship of Christ tout court. Archbishop Lefebvre basically said as much in 1988:

We do not have the same outlook on a reconciliation. Cardinal Ratzinger sees it as reducing us, bringing us back to Vatican II. We see it as a return of Rome to Tradition. We don’t agree; it is a dialogue of death. I can’t speak much of the future, mine is behind me, but if I live a little while, supposing that Rome calls for a renewed dialogue, then, I will put conditions … I will place the discussion at the doctrinal level: “Do you agree with the great encyclicals of all the popes who preceded you? Do you agree with Quanta Cura of Pius IX, Immortale Dei and Libertas of Leo XIII, Pascendi Gregis of Pius X, Quas Primas of Pius XI, Humani Generis of Pius XII? Are you in full communion with these Popes and their teachings? Do you still accept the entire Anti-Modernist Oath? Are you in favor of the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ? If you do not accept the doctrine of your predecessors, it is useless to talk! As long as you do not accept the correction of the Council, in consideration of the doctrine of these Popes, your predecessors, no dialogue is possible. It is useless.”

‘We have no part with the pantheon of the religions of Assisi’

There was a time when the SSPX followed in the footsteps of its founder on relations with Rome.

A joint letter signed by the superiors of the SSPX on July 6, 1988 addressed to Cardinal Gantin is a prime example of this. We present two brief snippets below. One wonders if the SSPX of today would even say this especially in light of the fact that it is in desperate need of bishops:

"As for us, we are in full communion with all the Popes and Bishops before the Second Vatican Council … we have never wished to belong to this system which calls itself the Conciliar Church, and defines itself with the Novus Ordo Missæ, an ecumenism which leads to indifferentism and the laicization of all society. Yes, we have no part, nullam partem habemus, with the pantheon of the religions of Assisi.”

More:

“We ask for nothing better than to be declared out of communion with this adulterous spirit which has been blowing in the Church for the last 25 years; we ask for nothing better than to be declared outside of this impious communion of the ungodly.

To be publicly associated with this sanction which is inflicted upon the six Catholic Bishops, Defenders of the Faith in its integrity and wholeness, would be for us a mark of honor and a sign of orthodoxy before the faithful. They have indeed a strict right to know that the priests who serve them are not in communion with a counterfeit church, promoting evolution, pentecostalism and syncretism.”

‘A place in the middle of this circus, of this zoo’

Another example is in the early 2000s when the Diocese of Campos “normalized” its canonical situation with the Conciliar Church. Bishop Fellay spoke about the deceptive nature of what happened, attributing it to ecumenism being extended to Tradition:

“It is primarily because of the pluralist and ecumenical vision of things now prevailing in the Catholic world. According to this vision, everybody is to mix together without anybody needing any longer to convert, as Cardinal Kasper said in connection with the Orthodox and even the Jews. From such a standpoint there will even be a little room for Catholic Tradition, but for our part we cannot accept this vision of variable truth any more than a mathematics teacher can accept a variable multiplication table.”

The day will come, we are sure and certain, when Rome will come back to Rome’s own Tradition and restore it to its rightful place, and we long with all our hearts for that blessed day. For the time being, however, things are not yet at that point, and to foster illusions would be deadly for the SSPX, as we can see, when we follow the turn of events in Campos.

They no longer see the situation of the Church as a whole, they content themselves with Rome’s gesture in favor of a little group of two dozen priests and say that there is no longer any emergency in the Church because the granting of a Traditional bishop has created a new juridical situation…They are forgetting the wood for a single tree.”

His Excellency also said the following, which further undercuts those who constantly praise SSPX “normalization” as an unqualified good:

“Their perspective is pluralism. Their thinking goes something like this: ‘Oh, look, if we have progressive people who do silly things as members of the Church, then we should also have a place for those who like tradition – a place in the middle of this circus, of this zoo, a place for dinosaurs and the prehistoric animals’ – that's our place (!). ‘But just stay in your zoo cage,’ they will train us, ‘You can get your food–the Old Mass; that's for the dinosaurs, but only for the dinosaurs. Don't give that food to the other zoo animals; they would be killed!’ That is why we cannot reconcile where this mentality is prevalent.”

‘If Rome truly recognized Tradition…’

Lastly, we wish to provide a final quotation from Bishop Fellay made in March 2002. Again, this was around the time that the Diocese of Campos was making a deal with the Vatican. Bishop Fellay rightly said it was “impossible to see in the recognition of Campos a recognition of Tradition”:

“What kind of Rome do we have when it can sign an agreement with Campos and in the same week can do something like Assisi II? They definitely will not say ‘We recognize Tradition’ in any universal sense. But Campos is contented because Rome has recognized Tradition in Campos. But has it, really? If Rome truly recognized Tradition anywhere it wouldn’t be able to have an Assisi II, the very contrary of Tradition. It is impossible to see in the recognition of Campos a recognition of Tradition.”

We can update His Excellency’s remarks in the following way if and when Rome and the SSPX come to an arrangement with Leo in 2025.

“What kind of Rome do we have when it can sign an agreement with the Society of St. Pius X and in the same year can do something like the Mass for the Care of Creation and continue to push Synodality? They definitely will not say ‘We recognize Tradition’ in any universal sense. But the SSPX is contented because Rome has recognized Tradition in the Society. But has it, really? If Rome truly recognized Tradition anywhere it wouldn’t offer a Mass for the Care of Creation and continue to push Synodality, the very contrary of Tradition. It is impossible to see in the recognition of the Society a recognition of Tradition.”

Let us pray that God will grant us the wisdom to see things clearly in the coming years under Leo. Surely there will be many Traditionalists who are deceived by him.