Excommunication communication: What if the SSPX does a schism?

If Rome declares a schism but no one acts on it, is it really a schism?

As the Society of St. Pius X moves forward with plans to consecrate several bishops without a papal mandate, Church leaders in Rome and further afield have begun to consider the implications.

SSPX leaders outside St. Peter’s Basilica, Aug. 2025. Credit: SSPX via Facebook.

The society’s leadership announced this week the names of four men who are slated to receive consecration at the hands of the society’s bishops, who themselves were illicitly consecrated in 1988.

As the SSPX has continued to insist the consecrations will proceed despite repeated warning from the Holy See that such an act is constituted an excommunicable offense in canon law, the superior, Rev. Davide Pagliarani, has laid out the society’s self-justification for its actions and continued existence.

In response, the Vatican has reminded the SSPX leadership that their theological and ecclesiological arguments are themselves sufficiently opposed to Church teaching and authority as to make the consecrations acts of schism, a second canonical crime also carrying the penalty of excommunication.

Crucially, a statement from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith noted that “formal adherence to the schism constitutes a grave offence against God and entails the excommunication established under Church law.”

A Vatican legal interpretation cited by the DDF clarified that “formal adherence” and therefore excommunication would be difficult to determine broadly in members of the laity who attended SSPX churches and liturgies, even frequently, and could only be considered on a case-by-case basis.

However, as regards priests and deacons of the society, the Vatican’s legal opinion held that “it seems clear that their ministerial activity within the schismatic movement is a more than evident sign that the two requirements mentioned above (n. 5) are met and that there is therefore a formal adherence,” and therefore the latae sententiae excommunication for schism.

While the Vatican’s canonical advice might be, in some senses, clear enough, the necessary consequences in the event the consecrations go ahead remain somewhat unclear. And among diocesan bishops with SSPX clergy and churches in their territories, questions have begun to be raised about who can and should do what, in the event of the consecrations and acts of schism.

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In the now likely event that the SSPX does go ahead, the overwhelming priority of the Holy See, and the pope personally, is likely to be the fate of the laity who have associated themselves, formally or informally, with their network of churches.

A number of options might be considered by Pope Leo to help foster the “generous provision” for Catholics attached to the old rite of the Mass which he has previously called for among diocesan bishops.

If one or more of those options could be said to represent an effort to “pull” Catholics out of the SSPX orbit and keep them within the communion of the Church, though, the Vatican will likely have to consider a number of “push” options against the SSPX hierarchy and clergy, who have laid out arguments to persuade laity within their orbit that the society is a spiritually credible moral authority relative to Rome.

The most immediate and most likely step will be a formal declaration of the schism and excommunications incurred by those directly participating in the episcopal consecrations scheduled for July. This would likely follow the lines of a similar declaration issued by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988.

However, were the Vatican to stop there, it could set up a potential grey area for society clergy to exploit and confuse Catholics about the nature and status of the SSPX. They could, for example, argue that a limited declaration of schism only pertaining to the bishops means that the priests of the society (and therefore their ministry) is not schismatic nor subject to canonical sanction — and thus Catholics could continue to attend SSPX liturgies without qualm of conscience.

This confusion would be substantially compounded if Leo were to not revoke the general faculties extended by Pope Francis to SSPX priests allowing them to hear confessions and witness Catholic marriages.

Such faculties, being granted by the pope, would need to be revoked by a similar papal act and could be argued to remain in force even if SSPX clerics would, according to standing Vatican legal advice, meet the criteria for “formal adherence” to schism.

Below the level of direct papal action, though, a number of other canonical and pastoral options remain on the table for various levels of Church authority to consider.

At the level of the Holy See, it is possible for the DDF to issue a further declaration that the society is, following the July consecrations, itself in a state of schism. The Vatican could then expressly forbid Catholic clergy from ministering in its churches or through its organization, and bar laity from seeking the sacraments from those who do so.

While this would be superficially straightforward to write, it does contain something of a canonical wrinkle, in as much as the Holy See does not recognize the SSPX as a “society” legally speaking — that is to say the Church does not accept it as a legitimate organization in the Church or recognize it as existing in canon law.

The Vatican has and does speak of the society as a “real thing,” in as much as it recognizes its leadership as speaking for a self-identified group. But from a strictly canonical standpoint, it would seem like Rome would first have to recognize the existence of the society qua legal body in order to outlaw it as schismatic.

Absent the formal recognition of the SSPX, and thus the legal rationale for acting against its members as a group, any canonical treatment of the SSPX clergy would have to proceed on a more local or even case-by-case individual basis.

Put simply, the DDF does not have the manpower and resources — and is unlikely to want to acquire or devote them — to compile and process a complete list of SSPX clergy and make individual declarations regarding their formal adherence to schism and incurring of an excommunication.

However, the challenge here would seem to be logistical, not a complexity of cases. The existing Vatican legal advice is that “ministerial activity within the schismatic movement is a more than evident sign” of schism sufficient to declare an excommunication — meaning that it is the volume of cases globally that presents the challenge, even if each individual case is open and shut, from a legal perspective.

But simply leaving the existing legal opinion unenforced would itself create the potential pastoral confusion already discussed.

Instead, a more practicable option might be for the DDF to release a more explicit statement on the exact status and canonical consequences of ministry by clerics in the SSPX, and make clear the precise terms under which, for example, an excommunication for schism could and should be declared regarding its priests.

Such a statement could then be taken up by those bishops at the diocesan level when and where they perceive there to be a pressing pastoral need for action.

As importantly, the practical administrative burden for a diocesan bishop to identify SSPX clerics operating with the diocesan territory out of the society’s churches and issue the necessary declaration of the automatic excommunications for schism having been incurred would be of a much more manageable scale.

A final potential option open to the hierarchy would be for diocesan bishops to proscribe the SSPX as a forbidden society at the level of particular law, basically recognizing it as an organization outside of the Church and incompatible with the faith.

This is slightly different, in an important way, from, for example, the DDF declaring the entire SSPX to be a schismatic society, since to go into schism one must start from a position of communion, and since the SSPX does not legally exist within the Church is cannot, as a group, be said to have left it.

A prohibited society, on the other hand, is the canonical designation of an external group, membership of which can then be punished canonically up to and including with an excommunication as deemed appropriate by the legislator.

Exactly such a designation was made by the U.S. Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1996, in a law which banned Catholics from joining a range of prohibited societies under pain of excommunication, with the SSPX listed along with the Freemasons and Planned Parenthood.

While SSPX sympathizers would no doubt strongly dispute being legally classed alongside masonic lodges and abortion providers, it is worth noting that the legitimacy of the Lincoln law was appealed to Rome at the time; it was upheld by the Vatican and the law remains in force in the diocese.

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In the event that the SSPX consecrations do proceed as planned in July, there will be, in all likelihood, a reflexive aversion among many in the Church to imposing or declaring penalties against any but the most necessary and narrow number of people.

This is culturally and historically understandable. In the years since the Second Vatican Council, the predominant current of thought within Church leadership has often appeared to consider canonical discipline as opposed to “pastoral concern,” rather than the two being necessarily linked.

However, the series of statements from the Vatican concerning the consequences of the planned SSPX consecrations suggest that, under Pope Leo, due process and clear application of the law is a priority.

The real test for local bishops, and the real message for local Catholics, will come as those consequences are or are not brought into force.

Having clearly and explicitly laid out the nature and danger of the SSPX’s schismatic manifesto, if the Church’s hierarchy declines to match its words with actions, it could leave many seeing the SSPX’s own actions as a schism without effects, and thus no schism at all.

This is, ironically, very close to what the SSPX leadership argue.