Healing a Schism: Vatican and Breakaway SSPX Seek Common Ground

Der Spiegel ^ | 04/16/2012 | Peter Wensierski

[Olog-hai]

For the pope's 85^th birthday on Monday, his own brother showed up in Rome empty-handed. But the brothers of the controversial Catholic splinter group Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) were more generous. They sent a letter—and its contents may be the greatest gift yet to the papacy of Benedict XVI. The pope has long wanted to heal the schism with the SSPX and bring the conservative followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre back into the fold. That hope may now become reality.

The Catholic traditionalist Lefebvre founded the SSPX in 1969 in answer to the reforms pushed through by the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, earlier that decade. The group has grown to include tens of thousands of followers and hundreds of priests—a "painful wound in the body of the church," Benedict XVI has said.

Even when SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson made global headlines in 2009 by publicly denying the Holocaust, the pope remained steadfast. Indeed, talks between the Vatican and the SSPX continued a short time later once Williamson, a native of Great Britain, had been marginalized. Now, it looks as though an agreement may be imminent.

Not everyone in the church is likely to be pleased by such a rapprochement. Liberal and left-leaning Catholics have long been opposed to the idea of allowing the SSPX back into the fold, granting them the right to once again consecrate priests and letting them celebrate mass according to the old rites. The Bishops' Conference of France is likely to protest as well. But the German pope Josef Ratzinger is determined. …

[Robert Drobot]

Advise to the SSPX : When in the vipers’ den one must act as a viper.

[Hieronymus]

in answer to the reforms pushed through by the Second Vatican Council

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“by” ought to be replaced by “in the name of” as the distinction between the two makes all the difference in this particular case.

[Campion]

Advice to the SSPX: Holy obedience to the successor of Peter. Try it.