A Consideration of the Risk of Sedevacantism and Disunity in the SSPX

Note: I made a mistake with some terms that I have fixed in the text, but the audio hasn’t been fixed yet. The mistake was in how I characterized the Des Lauriers position, and I mixed up some terms. I will fix the audio tomorrow. My apologies to anyone who believed I misrepresented their position.

I’ve decided to discontinue using Taylor’s name in the titles of these essays written in consideration of the podcast he produced about the SSPX. The reason I have made that decision is that I personally get quite annoyed when other writers/podcasters do what can be called “clout chasing,” which is what happens when they use the name or likeness of another creator in order to drive traffic to their work. Of course, I wasn’t doing that, but the internet is a stupid place with a lot of stupid opinions, so I thought I would take that element out of the situation to avoid the perception of that reality.

In any event, in this essay we will consider the opinion that within the structure of the SSPX, there is an inherent risk of sedevacantist mentalities as well as a risk of disunity that could lead to fracturing or breakaway groups.

In the first essay in this series, I categorized those objections as:

* Internal-unity/schism-risk argument

* Sedevacantist-harbouring concern

LINKS MENTIONED IN RECORDING:

Mexico Pilgrimage: https://kennedyhall.ca/mexico

https://realestateforlife.org/

https://www.icatholicmobile.com/

The Internal-unity/schism-risk argument refers to the groups, loosely called the “SSPX Resistance,” that broke away from the SSPX around 2012. For the sake of this essay, it would be too cumbersome to give a detailed overview of that history, because it is complicated and the various personalities are not unified. Nonetheless, below we will take a brief look at the phenomenon for a bit of context, and, if the reader is so inclined, I did produce a longer podcast going over the topic. I would recommend listening to that or watching it after you have read this if you desire more information.

The Sedevacantist-harbouring concern that Marshall mentions is a real mentality that is not uncommon in Tradition as such. I will also add that a variety of theories about the invalidity of certain post-conciliar papacies is not unique even to Traditional circles. The thesis that Pope Benedict remained pope even after his resignation is common in both Traditional circles and mainstream circles. Alas, we live in an age wherein such scandal, both moral and doctrinal, stems from the various pontificates, and it is only natural for members of the faithful to essentially throw up their hands and find an “anti-pope” solution to be the most fitting answer to the quagmire. Nevertheless, we will discuss this topic below and give some context on the sedevacantist situation that is often not considered.

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Internal-Unity/Schism-Risk

As was mentioned above, a brief overview of the SSPX Resistance will be offered here.

The so-called SSPX Resistance traces its origin to the internal crisis within the Society that erupted in 2012, when Bishop Bernard Fellay, then Superior General, pursued doctrinal discussions with the Holy See under Benedict XVI that culminated in Rome’s offer of a “Doctrinal Preamble” as the basis for a canonical regularization of the SSPX. Bishop Richard Williamson, along with a number of priests and religious who shared his alarm, viewed any practical agreement absent a genuine conversion of Rome on the errors of the Council as a betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s own stated principles — namely, that no canonical status should be sought until Rome had unambiguously returned to Tradition. Williamson’s public dissent, expressed most notably through his Eleison Comments (an email newsletter), led to his expulsion from the Society in October 2012, and around the same period several other priests — Fr. Chazal and Fr. Pfeiffer among them — were likewise expelled or departed for holding the same position. Out of this expulsion emerged an informal but loosely organized network of priests, religious, and laity who considered themselves the true continuators of Lefebvre’s line of total resistance to the post-conciliar Roman authorities, in contrast to what they saw as an SSPX leadership drifting toward compromise.

The Resistance solidified as a distinct, if loosely structured, movement without any single superior general or unified canonical framework, operating instead as a constellation of independent priories and chapels bound more by shared conviction than by common governance. This informality was thrown into sharp relief in 2015, when Williamson, acting on his own volition and without attempted recourse to Rome, consecrated Fr. Jean-Michel Faure a bishop in Brazil, a move that even many within the Resistance found difficult to justify canonically, since it lacked the kind of state-of-necessity argument Lefebvre himself had marshalled for the 1988 Écône consecrations. The episode exposed the structural weakness inherent to a movement, and further fragmentation followed in the years after. What holds the Resistance together to this day is less a common governance than a common diagnosis: that the SSPX’s post-2012 trajectory toward normalization with the conciliar Church represents an abandonment, whether gradual or decisive, of the very principles for which Lefebvre founded the Society in the first place.

Now, as I said, there is more that could be said, but a couple of things are worth noting. It was not only Williamson and the priests who left the Society who had concerns about the negotiations between Fellay and the Vatican at the time, because the situation was precarious. This is not to fault Fellay, and, to Fellay’s credit, he never did compromise the Society or the principles of Archbishop Lefebvre. In speaking with members of the Society, I have been told that there was a period of concern within the Society about the direction proposed at the time; nevertheless, even those who disagreed felt it was irresponsible to air their grievances publicly or to jump to any conclusions when nothing concrete had actually happened. As it stands, no compromising agreement with the Vatican that would have thrust Modernist principles into the structure of the Society was ever reached, and Bishop Fellay did an excellent job guiding the ship during that internal tempest.

In any event, we must move on from the historical consideration and address the notion that since something like this has happened before, it could happen again.

Well, all I can say is that there is no guarantee that it could not happen again, because this will only be known to history after this whole saga has run its course. At the same time, we must also accept the fact that this sort of thing is not uncommon in the history of religious congregations within the Church. In addition, there is a trend that we tend to see when we look to history.

Call to mind the formation of the Franciscans under Saint Francis. Saint Francis was an extraordinary Saint, to put it mildly, and the Franciscans grew rapidly throughout his life and continued to grow exponentially after he died. Nonetheless, something unfortunate took place not long after he died, which caused a rupture in the congregation, and a dissident group emerged that was called the Fraticelli.

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The Fraticelli emerged in the decades following the death of Saint Francis of Assisi in 1226, as a reaction against what a faction of the Franciscan order regarded as a betrayal of Francis’s own rule and testament regarding absolute poverty. Francis had bound his friars to a radical renunciation of property, both individual and corporate, and his Testament attempted to foreclose any future relaxation of that ideal by his successors. Within a generation, however, the order split between the Conventuals, who accepted papal permission to hold property corporately and adapt the rule to the practical needs of a growing international order, and the Spirituals, who insisted that Francis’s original poverty was binding in its strictest sense and could not be dispensed by any pope. Figures like Peter John Olivi supplied the Spirituals with a theological framework, arguing that Christ and the Apostles had possessed nothing even in common, a position that increasingly took on an apocalyptic cast under the influence of Joachimite prophecy, casting the controversy as a decisive moment in salvation history rather than a mere dispute over religious observance.

The rupture became formal and irrevocable under John XXII, who in the 1320s condemned the Spirituals’ core doctrine outright, declaring in Cum inter nonnullos that to assert Christ and the Apostles owned nothing was heretical, and moved decisively against the recalcitrant friars. Those who refused submission, now properly called Fraticelli, were driven out of the order and into clandestine communities scattered through central Italy, sustained by a hardened conviction that John XXII had fallen into heresy and had therefore forfeited the papacy itself — a conclusion some of them extended to the entire post-Nicholas III papal line. It is fascinating that the Fraticelli were essentially sedevacantists concerning John XXII’s ruling on the topic of property ownership, because John XXII infamously taught a legitimate heresy, or at least grave error, about the state of souls before the Second Coming, which he recanted on his deathbed.

Deprived of any formal structure and increasingly persecuted as heretics by the Inquisition, the Fraticelli persisted in isolated pockets for well over a century, their communities dwindling but not entirely extinguished until the fifteenth century. Some members of the Fraticelli were even convinced enough to hold on to their positions to the point of being burned at the stake. Their trajectory stands as an early demonstration of a movement born from a sincere claim to represent the true intention of a founder against his own order’s later development, only to harden, in the absence of any legitimate structure to appeal to, into open defiance of legitimate superiors.

I believe the similarities between the so-called SSPX Resistance and the Fraticelli should be evident.

Ultimately, we cannot guarantee one way or the other whether there could be any further tension or breakaway groups that shed themselves from the SSPX, but we can say that a normal canonical status will not be the thing that guarantees against such sorrows. The Franciscans are not merely a religious order, but an order approved through miraculous intervention.

If we could take a quick detour here, given that it is topical, we could also address the comparison that Marshall put forth in his podcast between the SSPX and the Franciscans. In essence, it was argued that Saint Francis is a great example of true obedience, who left the approval of his order up to the Pope. You may recall from the history of Saint Francis that he believed God had called him to an extraordinary mission to form a congregation, and he then sought approval directly from the Pope. At first, this seemed foolhardy, but the Pope at the time was informed miraculously in a dream that Saint Francis would be a great reformer within the Church.

Certainly, this is a great event in Church history, and, of course, if something like this were to happen in the case of the SSPX, it would be a wonderful thing. Nevertheless, the founding of the Franciscans and the SSPX are very different. You see, Francis believed he had been called directly by God to do something unprecedented, whereas Lefebvre believed it was his ordinary duty to continue doing what he had always done and was trained to do when the hierarchy had taken an unprecedented step away from Tradition. The Society was not formed in an extraordinary way, and claims no extraordinary mission, whereas Saint Francis did something extraordinary and Heaven provided extraordinary proof.

The crux of the SSPX issue is essentially juridical and doctrinal in an era of great confusion and the spreading of immorality and heresy amongst the hierarchy, and it is the SSPX that is holding fast to what has always been done, rather than trying to do something novel.

At any rate, the Franciscans began with literal Divine Approval that manifested in an extraordinary manner, and a painful split in the order was not avoided; the ripple effect of that split lasted a long time and was not extinguished for over a century. If an order with such a miraculous beginning and such an incredible saint could not avoid any interior drama, then we cannot expect the SSPX to avoid any such risks either.

However, we can say that the SSPX has handled the situation well, and it is worth remembering that the dissident groups left the SSPX because they were expelled. If the risk of such positions as held by the Resistance were inherent to the Society, then they would not be unwelcome within its structure. So, we could say that the split is not indicative of any disorder within the Society, but rather that such disorder is unwelcome, which is a good thing.

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Sedevacantist-Harbouring Concern

Sedevacantism is a veritable rabbit hole where one can lose all sense of direction. Now, I understand this will be offensive to some sedevacantists; nonetheless, when we consider the landscape of the various sedevacantist theories, we find stark disagreements between the various camps, and, sometimes, the sharpest vitriol pronounced by sedevacantist writers and influencers is levelled at other sedevacantists.

In any event, I do believe that it is fair to give the Sedevacantist milieu its due, because it is not an unfounded hypothesis in its own right, even if I believe there are holes in the various theories that leave certain fundamental questions unanswered. Furthermore, I will say to the inevitable onslaught from various sedevacantist writers that I am going to preemptively decline to engage in any form of debate or discussion, because, quite frankly, I have no desire to do such a thing, or the time to devote to the topic.

The theological question of whether a pope can fall from office through heresy runs into an immediate structural problem that every scholastic who addressed it had to solve before saying anything else: the axiom, enshrined by Boniface VIII and carried into the 1917 Code, that the First See is judged by no one — prima sedes a nemine iudicatur. If no one on earth holds jurisdiction over the pope, then no tribunal can convict him, depose him, or strip him of office in the ordinary juridical sense, since a sentence presupposes a judge with authority over the one sentenced. Whatever solution a given theologian proposed, it had to respect this axiom, which is precisely why the debate turned on a distinction between an act that causes the loss of office and an act that merely recognizes a loss already caused by something else — namely, the heresy itself, understood as operating automatically under divine law rather than through any human sentence.

St. Robert Bellarmine, in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, ch. 30), catalogued the prevailing opinions on the question before advancing his own. He rejected Albert Pighius’s view that a pope simply cannot fall into heresy at all, and he likewise rejected the opinion that a pope remains fully pope even in manifest heresy until some human sentence is passed against him — largely the position associated with Cajetan. Bellarmine’s own “fifth opinion,” which became the common Bellarminian position among later manualists, held that a pope who becomes a manifest and pertinacious heretic ceases ipso facto to be pope by operation of divine law itself, the moment he places himself outside the Church through public defection from the faith, since a public heretic is no longer a member of the Church and therefore cannot be her head. On this view, no human sentence is needed to effect the loss of office — it has already happened, self-inflicted, before any cardinal or council acts.

Cajetan’s competing position, developed in his work on the authority of pope and council, took the connection between the man and the office more seriously as a juridical bond rather than a purely moral one, and argued by analogy to processes like the severance of a marriage bond or the deprivation of a beneficiary from a benefice: even where the underlying disqualifying fact already exists, the formal separation of a man from an office he validly held requires a ministerial, declarative-cum-deprivative act of the Church to sever it, since offices are conferred and removed through the Church’s own juridical action, not automatically dissolved by the subject’s private sin alone. In essence, Cajetan grants that a heretical pope forfeits the right to retain the office in the sight of God, but insists the juridical tie is only severed when the Church, acting through some competent body, formally declares and executes that separation.

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John of St. Thomas and, later, Francisco Suárez largely sided with Bellarmine’s views while further developing the idea: the heresy itself, once manifest and pertinacious, is what severs the man from the papacy by the operation of divine law, but both insisted that the Church — practically speaking, the College of Cardinals, or in default of them a general council — would still have to act to establish the notoriety of the fact with juridical certainty, so that the faithful could know with confidence that the See was vacant and a conclave could proceed to a valid election. Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, writing a century before Bellarmine, had already anticipated this same requirement, holding that a manifestly heretical pope falls from the papacy by the very fact of his heresy, yet that this fall still needs the recognition and declaration of a general council before the universal Church can act on it with certainty. Even the manualists who followed the Bellarminian line most closely preserved this same two-step structure: the loss of office is automatic and prior, caused by the heresy itself under divine law, while the subsequent action of cardinals or bishops is merely declaratory, establishing as a matter of public juridical record what has already occurred, precisely so that the axiom nemo iudex in causa sua (no one is a judge in his own case), and the deeper axiom that no one judges the pope, are never actually violated. This is also, not incidentally, the theological seed from which canon 188 §4 of the 1917 Code grew, providing that ecclesiastical offices become vacant “ipso facto et sine ulla declaratione” (automatically, without any declaration) upon public defection from the faith — a codification of exactly the automatic-loss principle Bellarmine had defended three centuries earlier, even as the practical question of who must recognize and act upon that vacancy remained.

The theological tradition, therefore, must be approached with honesty and caution when discussing this topic, and I do not believe it is helpful to simply disregard all sedevacantist thinking as if it were crazy, because the various theories are far from crazy, at least as theological arguments.

One major theologian of the 20th century, who worked closely with both Pope Pius XII and Archbishop Lefebvre, attempted to give an answer to this conundrum.

Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, O.P. (1898–1988) stands as one of the most theologically formidable figures of our era, precisely because he came to it from the summit of the pre-conciliar Roman academy rather than from the fringe. A normalien and agrégé in mathematics before he ever entered religion, he took the Dominican habit in 1926, was ordained in 1931, and went on to teach philosophy at Le Saulchoir before assuming a chair in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Lateran University under Pius XII, where he served as an advisor to the Pope on the dogma of the Assumption and, from 1954 to 1955, as Pius XII’s personal confessor before being succeeded in that office by the future Cardinal Bea. It was this same rigour that made him, in 1969, one of the principal theologians behind the Ottaviani Intervention, the critical study of the Novus Ordo Missae presented to Paul VI — a document some hold him to have substantially authored. He subsequently taught at Écône itself, but worked under Archbishop Lefebvre for a time before he came to the conclusion that Paul VI could not be a true pope, a conviction that led to Lefebvre removing him from his teaching post at the seminary in 1977.

Rather than settling into simple sedevacantism, Guérard des Lauriers’s theological training pressed him toward a more precise formulation of the problem, since he judged bare “vacancy” insufficient to explain how a man could be publicly, if defectively, occupying the Roman See at all. Drawing on classical distinctions between the matter and form, he essentially argued from that point. His thought can be summarized thusly:

In Thomistic generation, matter never receives form indiscriminately — it must first be brought into proximate disposition to that specific form, so that the form’s arrival simply actuates a potency the matter already stood ready to receive; applying this analogically to the papacy, a valid conclave election supplies the matter of the office by designating one subject, and one alone, in ultimate disposition to receive it, just as Cardinal Pacelli stood uniquely disposed the moment before his election — but the form, the actual conferral of papal munus and the charism of Christ’s indefectible assistance, is really distinct from that material designation and does not follow automatically wherever the matter is positively indisposed to receive it, the way an ill-disposed subject fails to receive a form it actively resists rather than merely awaits; since a publicly and pertinaciously heretical claimant is a subject whose will is fixed in a disposition contrary to the papal form, the election still produces a pope materialiter, but the formal conjunction of man and office fails to complete, leaving him non formaliter.

This argument was des Lauriers’ attempt preserve both the Church’s unbroken juridical continuity through the conclaves and the dogmatic impossibility of a true pope teaching heresy, without falling into either bare sedevacantism or unqualified recognition. However, there is an issue with this because mere material without the form cannot generate. Because something purely material (in potency) cannot cause or create anything. So, it can be argued that after Paul VI everything is gone, there is no longer a hierarchy in the Church, not even in potency.

In any event, I give this general overview of Sedevacantism to demonstrate that at root it is not an insane theory, but, at the same time, there are unanswered questions that have real consequences, given the many decades that have followed without any valid popes. Yes, I understand that sedevacantist authors may retort that I am not expressing which unanswered questions remain sufficiently, but, please, be patient, because I mention at least one below. Also, this is not meant to be a complete treatment of sedevacantism, and that has been done in other places by other authors.

For its part, the SSPX recognizes the tradition, but rejects the concrete decision made by sedevacantists that we are required to adopt one of the aforementioned theories concretely. The SSPX’s case rests on necessity and epikeia operating on the disciplinary/governance plane — jurisdiction, faculties, penalties — which the tradition treats as flexible because it exists to serve souls, not the other way around. Sedevacantism falters because it applies that same necessity logic to the constitutional plane — who validly holds the papal office — which no strand of the tradition, not even Bellarmine’s most aggressive hypothetical, allows to be resolved by private judgment or unilateral declaration; that requires the Church’s own competent recognition.

The aforementioned theories certainly give an honest man the right to entertain doubts about the validity of various popes, given all the dubious, if not heretical, theological positions that have been espoused from post-conciliar pontificates. At the same time, the SSPX as such rejects the adoption of these theories for prudential reasons.

Because we are dealing with possible or probable opinions, which have not yet been defined, the prudent response can be summarized with an analogy:

Suppose you happen upon a man who appears dead on the side of the road. Three doctors are called to assess the situation. One doctor believes that the man is dead, and then declares that he is, in fact, dead; another doctor has a suspicion that he may very well be dead, but, until it can be definitively proven by further examination and second opinions, he proceeds under the assumption that he could be alive, and therefore must be treated; a third doctor believes he is alive, even though he appears dead, and also proceeds to operate as if he is alive.

The positions tolerated within the Society are the second and third positions, because the tradition gives us good reason to believe that the man may be dead, but we also may believe he is alive. Either way, until it is absolutely proven that he is dead, or a mechanism for proof is defined, we must do our best to save him.

Until that definition comes forth, we proceed under the assumption that he could be alive, even if there are strong reasons to believe he is not. It is a prudential decision, and not a strictly theological one, because, morally speaking, there is more at stake.

It is a prudential decision because, morally speaking, man does not do well unless submitted to authority, even if that submission is under tension. The post-conciliar popes have been less than stellar, to put it mildly; nonetheless, it is not natural for a Catholic to be without a pope, at least for an extended period. It is also not natural for a pope to allow or even cause the spreading of heresy, but, though we cannot solve this dilemma in theory, a prudential decision must be made regarding how to act.

(I am already envisioning the screeds that will be written against me from sedevacantist authors, with many of the sentences in ALL CAPS.)

As Catholics, we must maintain the sensus ecclesiae, which is a shared internal capacity, spiritual instinct, and habit of mind to think, feel, and will in harmony with the Catholic Church. Certainly, there is little harmony in the Church presently, humanly speaking; however, there is also no harmony of mind in the world of sedevacantism.

Ultimately, all prudential decisions are decisions that must be made between competing goods, and we face, in this instance, two competing realities that have certainties, uncertainties, and possible defects which will only be known to history. For all we know, if we go back to the analogy, the man may be dead, and it may be useless to try and treat him. However, he may also be alive, so we must proceed to at least try to maintain his life.

In this sense, we must try to maintain that living connection with Saint Peter’s office as it stands occupied by men who either hold it truly or do not. In addition, while schism is often considered merely in its vertical element — that is, top-down from the Pope — we must remember that schism is also considered horizontally, that is, in consideration of our communion with other Catholics.

Many sedevacantist positions ultimately lead to a rejection of the Catholicity of other Catholics who do not hold the same sedevacantist position. Not all do, but some of the positions do, and they do so with vigour. There is a real risk of true isolation in the sedevacantist world, and as we meander through these uncharted waters as we have for decades, the prospect of decades without a true visible head of the Church, if I may say so in an unsophisticated way, simply doesn’t fit. Furthermore, while I fully grant the logical coherence of doubting the validity of a given pontificate for the reasons explained in our consideration of the theological tradition, I also struggle to understand why sedevacantists often argue that the SSPX position, which they call Recognize and Resist, is logically incoherent.

It is the very theologians who are used to justify a sedevacantist thesis who give justification for resisting a pope who would seek to destroy the Church, either directly through evil doctrinal pronouncements, or indirectly through the toleration of the spread of heresy, or the promotion of heretics, such as was the case with Pope Honorius.

In any event, among other reasons, so that the fundamental element of the sensus ecclesiae is upheld, the SSPX rejects the adoption of a sedevacantist thesis by its members in the concrete, even if the tradition gives reason to have good-faith doubts.

Of course, some attendees of the SSPX will come to their own conclusions and adopt whatever positions they want, and, beyond a general approach wherein the leadership of the Society instructs members on valid positions on the papacy, there isn’t a whole lot that priests can do on the ground to police the thoughts and public expressions of the laity.

Admittedly, I do regret some of the expressions of opinion of some SSPX laity in the public forum, but I also regret some of my own expressions as I think about what I have written and said over the years.

But again, if there is a concern that the SSPX is not equipped to handle the issue of the spread of, let’s say, less than helpful opinions by parishioners, well, I can only say that we cannot expect the SSPX, with its limited resources, to do more than the institutions of the Church. At present, it seems that the hierarchy as such, with all its wealth, means of communication, and societal influence, cannot even ensure that the faithful are catechized to the level expected of a First Communicant in a Traditional parish or chapel.

We might think of the old adage used to express obvious affirmation, “Is the Pope Catholic?” and how it is difficult to even use that adage today, sadly, because we are in a position where we are left to doubt the catholicity of the Roman Pontiff.

If we cannot expect the Pope of the Catholic Church in our day to ensure that the Church operates in a Catholic way and teaches truly Catholic doctrine, then I think it is far too much to expect of overextended and self-sacrificing missionary priests in the Society to ensure theological and intellectual conformity about a question in the realm of theological dispute amongst their flock.

Ultimately, we are facing a crisis that the hierarchy of the Church has caused, not the SSPX, and until that crisis is solved, we will have to tolerate differences of opinion that would not be conceived of during normal times.

Kyrie Eleison

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