Will the Real Schismatics Please Step Forward

David Martin | The Daily Knight

Since its inception in 1970, the Society of St. Pius X founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre has been falsely accused of being a traditionalist church or religion with its own set of doctrines that exist outside the Catholic Church. This is the furthest thing from the truth.

The SSPX is not a religion but a society or religious order like any order of the Church, and while the Society itself lacks canonical status its members already have full union with the Church because of their baptism, their profession of the Faith, and their acknowledgment of all the popes of history.

The only slight problem with the SSPX is that it operates out of side chapels not recognized by Rome, but Vatican bureaucrats bear much of the blame since they blocked plans to bring the Society into the Church against the efforts of Benedict XVI who sought to give the SSPX full canonical status back in 2009. His design was to bring in the SSPX as special forces to help correct the problems in the Church – problems of banal liturgy, heresy, and apostasy. The modernists dreaded this.

SSPX Rejection of Vatican II is what Elicits Charges of Schism

The charge that Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops against the pope's orders was only a loophole to try to hang the Society with. What modernists detest about the SSPX is its pure ancient liturgy and doctrine and its rejection of Vatican II, but these are the SSPX’s strong points. This is what makes them good and one with the Church, whereas the fake doctrine and practice of modernists is what places them outside the Church. It’s not a formal schism but it is schism, nonetheless.

Most Catholics today would say that the way to have full union with the Church is by flowing with the wide body of the Church, but St. Augustine thoroughly debunked this when he said: “Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”

Flowing with Heresy Leads into Schism

Nay, following the jeering crowd driven by a brood of vipers is not the thing to do. Rome today is infested with schismatics, heretics, and homosexuals, who together advocate a new religion of man that includes in its assemblies LGBT offenders, heresy, pagan liturgy, and members of other religions. The seducers behind this are the true schismatics who are leading the wide body of the Church down the path of perdition, fulfilling Our Lady’s prophecy at Garabandal: “Many cardinals, many bishops, and many priests are on the road to perdition and are taking many souls with them.” (June 18, 1965)

These misguided souls and their leaders are the ones driving into schism. The way to have union with the Church is to align oneself with Holy Tradition, the Apostles, and the popes of history, and to do this even if no one else is doing it. In the words of St. Augustine:

“Right is right even if no one is doing it.”