Growing, Rising, or Falling? A Friendly Reply to “The Continuing Fall of the SSPX”

We write as fellow Catholics, because Catholics who love the Church and disagree on how to defend her should talk to one another in public, by name, with arguments on the table. Understanding in the Church grows this way: we test each other’s reasoning in charity and keep what holds.

First, a word of thanks. The Tridentineers have shared this piece, and their posture deserves recognition. They love the traditional liturgy without letting that love curdle into contempt for the Pope, and they insist that the faithful remain in the Church and fight her evils from within rather than abandon her. We think they have the balance right.

Thanks are also due to Jonel Esto, author of “The Continuing Fall of the SSPX” at Epistles. He set out to steer between Modernism and what he calls extreme traditionalism, he engages commenters at length while working nights, and his masthead carries a line drawn from St. Pius X: the sincere and zealous reformer avoids extremes and is always united in the closest bonds with the Church and Christ her Head. (The masthead version joins two sentences of Editae Saepe n. 29, where the Pope is describing St. Charles Borromeo.) We share that goal.

Below we give full credit where the article argues well, and in places try to strengthen those arguments. Then we press hard where it fails, because a true conclusion defended with a weak argument is a gift to the other side. We agree with Mr. Esto’s conclusion. Several of the arguments he uses to reach it do not hold.

What the article gets right

1. The office does not depend on the officeholder

This is the article’s best argument, and it answers the SSPX’s case at its root. The Society’s justification runs: Rome has erred, so obedience is suspended and necessity takes over. Mr. Esto replies that God never promised every holder of Church authority would be holy or doctrinally sharp, and that bad leaders do not dissolve the authority of their office.

Scripture makes this point repeatedly, and the article could have pressed it harder. Our Lord said that “the scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses,” and therefore “all things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not” (Matthew 23:2–3). He bound obedience to the office in the very breath in which he condemned the men. Caiphas, who engineered the Crucifixion, still prophesied truly, and St. John is careful to say why: “this he spoke not of himself: but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation” (John 11:51). The office spoke through a wicked man. David twice spared Saul, a king who had lost God’s favour, because Saul was still the Lord’s anointed (1 Kings 24:7 and 26:9 in the Douay-Rheims, 1 Samuel in most modern Bibles). And St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face over a real failure (Galatians 2:11), but he did it within communion. He did not ordain a rival apostle.

That last example is the key distinction. The Church has a long tradition of loyal resistance: rebuke, petition, appeal, even public correction. St. Catherine of Siena scolded popes. The Society answers that the tradition contains more than that, and it is right to: St. Eusebius of Samosata ordained in sees held by Arians, St. Athanasius ordained outside his own territory, and we may as well add the case our own citation below comes from, since Jerome wrote the Dialogue Against the Luciferians about a schism that began when Lucifer of Cagliari consecrated Paulinus at Antioch without authorisation. The examples are real and a reply has to meet them. The reply is that not one of them was done against a standing, explicit prohibition from the Pope, which is the whole of the difference. Irregular is not the same as defiant. Consecrating bishops after Peter has said no, twice and in writing, does Peter’s job without him.

2. Numbers do not vindicate

Mr. Esto insists that growth is not a sign of divine approval. On the principle, he is right. After the Council of Ariminum in 359, St. Jerome wrote that “the whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” The Mormons, the Pentecostals and Islam have all grown spectacularly. A headcount is not a theological argument.

This principle deserves more respect than the article’s critics in the comments gave it. Several treated the Society’s growth, from the forty members one commenter counted in 1975 to more than seven hundred priests now, as if it settled the question. It does not settle it. Our Lord told us to judge by fruit, and the Church has always judged fruit by holiness and fidelity before size. As we will argue below, the same principle also stops the article from claiming the SSPX is falling. A neutral measure cuts both ways.

3. The history is told fairly, in the Society’s own words

The article does not caricature the SSPX. It walks through the 1975 withdrawal of canonical status, the 1988 consecrations, Benedict XVI’s lifting of the excommunications in 2009, and the pastoral faculties Francis extended from the Year of Mercy onward. It also reports Fr. Pagliarani’s position honestly: that the Society denies intending schism and sees the consecrations as doctrinal fidelity rather than rebellion.

Its sharpest move is quoting Bishop Fellay’s letter of 15 December 2008, in which he wrote that “we firmly believe in the primacy of Peter and in his prerogatives, and for this reason the current situation causes us much suffering.” One correction, offered as a friend: the article presents this as a letter to Benedict XVI. It was addressed to Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and it reaches us because the Congregation for Bishops quoted it in the decree of 21 January 2009 that lifted the excommunications, signed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. That provenance makes the point stronger, not weaker: the words are preserved in the very act of Rome’s clemency. It is the right witness to call. The Society’s own leadership once described its irregular status as a wound to be healed, not a badge of fidelity to be worn. The article holds the Society to its own words.

4. Charity toward the laity and the young priests

The article refuses to treat every SSPX chapel-goer as a schismatic. Many attend in good faith, it says, often believing they have limited access to the traditional liturgy elsewhere, and moral theology does not equate their culpability with formal separation. It extends the same charity to young men formed in the Society who serve according to their conscience.

Moral theology backs this up: culpability depends on knowledge and consent, and a Catholic who drives to the nearest Latin Mass is not Archbishop Lefebvre. The commenter who wrote that the only Latin Mass near him is an SSPX chapel fifteen minutes from his house, and that he is “waiting to see how all this works out,” is exactly the person this distinction protects.

5. Obedience is traditional; private judgment is modern

The article’s most quotable line is also one of its truest: “Blatantly disobeying the Magisterium without a sufficiently grave reason is not traditional at all; it is a modern attitude.”

Setting one’s own reading of Tradition above the living authority that guards it is the principle of the Reformation. A Catholic who decides which papal acts bind him, on the strength of his own theology, has adopted the Protestant method even if he reaches Catholic conclusions. The irony, which the article leaves unstated, is that the Society’s patron is the source of the line on the Epistles masthead: the true reformer is united in the closest bonds with the Church and Christ her Head. Obedience belongs to the Tradition itself.

6. It called the outcome

One note on the text before we credit it. The article was published on 30 April and has been revised since; its own metadata gives a last modification in August 2026, and the graph discussed above was uploaded in June and already carries a 2026 node. We quote it as it stands today, and we have tried not to credit it with foresight that may have been added later. What is on the page, and what was certainly there in April, is the expectation that the consecrations would bring further canonical penalties, including excommunications and a renewed declaration of schism, and the warning that no future pope could be counted on to lift them as Benedict did.

That expectation proved correct, and then some. On 2 July the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith declared the ministers of the Society to be in schism and stated that the sacrament of penance administered by them and the marriages they assist are invalid. On the lay faithful it said that those who formally adhere “are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated under the conditions established in the 1996 Explanatory Note of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.” Those conditions matter enormously and we return to them below. On the canonical forecast, the article was right and its critics were wrong.

Where the arguments do not hold

We accept the article’s conclusion. We do not accept the case it makes for its headline, for six reasons.

1. The title promises a measurement the article never makes

“The Continuing Fall of the SSPX” is a factual claim. Fall means decline, and decline is measured. Yet the article’s first sentence concedes that the Society “may have grown numerically” and then redefines the terms: it “never truly rose.” From there, rising means fidelity and canonical regularity, and falling means their absence.

That is a legitimate move, and the article does supply a criterion for it. Twice it says what rising would consist of: the Society “ultimately needs an official mission recognized by Rome, and this can only begin through the restoration of a regular canonical status.” That is not circular and it is not unfalsifiable. It is the same criterion we would use ourselves.

The problem is that the title promises a measurement the body never performs. “Continuing fall” tells the reader that something has been measured over time and found to be going down. What the article delivers is a criterion, stated twice, and never applied to any quantity across any period. The headline trades on the ordinary meaning of the word while the argument uses a different one.

A reader pressed exactly this in the comments: if not numbers, what metric shows the Society failing to flourish, and what does the article’s graph actually measure? The reply, that they may be growing in number but are not rising in fidelity, restated the conclusion rather than supplying the measure. The graph itself, though, answers better than the reply did. Its six nodes are all labelled, and they plot canonical standing: 1970 Establishment, 1975 Suppression, 1988 Schism, 2009 Partial Reconciliation, 2015 Sacramental Faculties, 2026 Schism. That is a real measure, and it is the right one.

There is a further cost to the title. It invites a reader to imagine a Society shrinking, and it is not. The Society’s own published figures run to roughly 740 to 750 priests, with 264 seminarians, 145 brothers, 88 oblate sisters and 250 sisters, in houses in 77 countries. We give a range deliberately: the two public renderings of that dataset differ on the priests and agree on everything else, and the Society’s own page carries no date, so a precise figure here would be false precision. The order of magnitude is not in doubt, and it is not falling. If the argument is about communion, title it that way.

2. It contradicts itself

The opening paragraph says that since its establishment in 1970 the Society “has been in continual decline.” Two paragraphs later, the article says it is “currently in its most favorable position since its canonical status was withdrawn in 1975.” These can be reconciled, and in fairness they should be: the Society was erected as a pious union in 1970 and lost that standing in 1975, so a high point measured since 1975 sits inside the trough rather than above it.

What will not reconcile is the word continual, and the article’s own graph is the witness. That line does not fall continuously. It falls to 1988 and then climbs, through the Partial Reconciliation of 2009 to the Sacramental Faculties of 2015, and holds there for eleven years before dropping in 2026. A decline interrupted by a seventeen-year recovery is not a continual decline; it is a fall, a long repair, and a second fall. That is a better story than the one the opening sentence tells, and the article drew it before it wrote the sentence. The honest framing is the second one: real gains were made, and the consecrations threw them away.

3. The FSSP comparison applies two standards

The article holds up the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter as a community that took a different path and “genuinely flourished.” We agree it has, and it is the right model. The obvious objection, that the FSSP is credited for growth while the SSPX’s growth is ruled out of evidence, does not quite land, and we will not press it: the article’s criterion is plainly conjunctive, growth together with communion, and on that reading the two communities are measured by one rule, not two. But the conjunctive reading has a cost the article does not pay. If flourishing requires both, then the SSPX satisfies one conjunct, and a piece arguing that it is falling owes the reader an account of the half it has.

There is also an awkward fact. The FSSP was founded in 1988 by priests who left the SSPX after the consecrations, under the Ecclesia Dei commission that Rome created in response to them. Its flourishing is the strongest argument for the article’s position, but it is not an argument that the SSPX has been falling since 1970. Make the FSSP the proof that tradition thrives under Peter. Do not make it a scoreboard.

4. The “smokescreen” charge is unsupported

The article says the Society’s appeal to the advancing age of its bishops “increasingly appears to function as a smokescreen for deeper issues.” It names the deeper issue in the next sentence, a mindset resembling private judgment, and we think that diagnosis is largely right. What is missing is any evidence that the age argument is a pretext for it rather than a reason standing alongside it, and the facts make the pretext reading hard to hold. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais died in October 2024. Richard Williamson died in January 2025, though he had been expelled in 2012 and so had not counted among the Society’s bishops for a dozen years. That left two, both approaching seventy, for some seven hundred and fifty priests in houses in seventy-seven countries. A sacramental need was real.

The stronger argument concedes the need and shows that it did not license the act. On 5 May 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Ratzinger signed a protocol which said: “we will suggest to the Holy Father that he name a bishop chosen in the society, proposed by Archbishop Lefebvre.” The next day Lefebvre wrote pressing for the consecration to take place on 30 June. He repudiated the protocol within weeks, and on 30 June he consecrated four bishops without a mandate. He distrusted Rome’s promise to take a bishop from among his own priests. That distrust is understandable. It is still not a papal mandate. In February 2026 the Dicastery told the Society it was open to renewed doctrinal talks, and warned that proceeding would end any prospect of them. Twice the need could have been met through Peter. This case requires no guessing at anyone’s motives.

5. It never answers the Society’s actual argument

The SSPX does not claim it consecrated bishops because it prefers the old Mass. It claims a state of necessity in the Church, and it cites the Code of Canon Law’s provisions on necessity (canons 1323 and 1324) to argue that no penalty was incurred. The article calls this private judgment and moves on. Naming a position is not refuting it.

The refutation exists, and it is short. It begins with the text the article never cites and which rules on precisely this question. The Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, in its Explanatory Note of 24 August 1996 on the Lefebvre movement, states flatly that “there is never a necessity to ordain Bishops contrary to the will of the Roman Pontiff,” because an act aimed at the Church’s unity cannot be the remedy for her crisis. The Dicastery’s decree of 2 July 2026 adopts that Note as its own. A Catholic arguing necessity is not arguing against a cardinal’s opinion; he is arguing against a standing Roman judgment on his exact claim.

Second, canon 1323 excuses one who “acted under the compulsion of grave fear, even if only relative, or by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience, unless, however, the act is intrinsically evil or tends to be harmful to souls.” The Society’s own canonical study of the 1988 consecrations, working through and endorsing Fr. Gerald Murray’s thesis, accepts the governing premise in one line: “a truly schismatic act always has the character of an act harmful to souls.” Its argument is only that these consecrations were not schismatic, and it reaches that conclusion by holding that the character of the act “does not arise only from the judgment which the Holy See has given to it, it arises also from the evaluation which the author has given to it.” That is the whole hinge, and it is the one thing a Catholic cannot concede. Rome has ruled twice, in Ecclesia Dei in 1988 and in the Dicastery’s decree of 2 July 2026, that the act was schismatic. Whether a given act severs communion with Peter is not a question each man settles for himself by examining his own sincerity.

Third, a state of necessity means that the faithful cannot obtain what they need through ordinary means. In 2026 the traditional Mass is offered by the FSSP, the Institute of Christ the King and diocesan priests across the world, under the real restrictions of Traditionis custodes and the rescript of 2023, which this site asks Rome to relax, but not absent. Rome had extended the Society’s own priests faculties for confession, and from 2017 local ordinaries could delegate them to witness marriages. A Church that does this has not abandoned souls.

Fourth, Cardinal Burke, no enemy of tradition, said bluntly the day before the consecrations: “the present situation does not constitute a state of necessity because, in fact, the idea behind it is that the faithful who are in the FSSPX cannot live their Catholic faith in the Church without having a church within the Church.” He added the principle that governs the whole question: “No situation justifies doing something that is intrinsically evil.” In the same interview he rejected the rumour that every member of the Society would be excommunicated, and said that many of its faithful and priests “do not have a schismatic spirit; they simply love the tradition of the older use of the Roman Missal.”

The article needed this argument. Without it, SSPX readers will conclude, wrongly, that their strongest claim has no answer.

6. Its boldest claim is asserted, not argued

The article states that the Novus Ordo, “despite its weaknesses, can spiritually nourish the faithful, and in some cases may bear greater spiritual fruit than a valid Tridentine Mass offered in deliberate disobedience to legitimate ecclesial authority.” To a traditional reader this is the most provocative sentence in the piece, and it gets one line. We quote it whole because the hedge matters: in some cases is a modest claim, and it is quoted without those words often enough that the modest version deserves to be seen.

It can be defended, and here is the defence the article leaves out. Let us say the uncomfortable half first, in our own voice: the Church had the authority to promulgate the Missal of Paul VI, and the Mass offered in it is valid and is the Sacrifice of Calvary. This site judges the reform poorer than what it replaced, and argues that at length elsewhere; that judgment is about degree, manner and warrant, and it never touched validity. The Sacrifice offered at every valid Mass is the same, infinite Sacrifice. But the fruit received by those who take part depends partly on their dispositions, and obedience is objectively one of them. Deliberate defiance is a worse disposition for receiving than obedience is, which is why the Church attaches fruit to the one and not the other. What any particular soul’s dispositions are is not ours to rank, and the article’s own section on the laity is right that most of those in the pews are not defying anyone. Mr. Esto could have made this case in three sentences. Asserting the conclusion without it hands critics an easy dismissal.

A word on the comment section

The comments, insofar as they existed at the time of this writing, are part of the argument, so we will address those as well.

The best canonical reasoning in the whole exchange is in a comment. One commenter argued that the SSPX cannot be schismatic because it claims no jurisdiction, only sacramental power. Mr. Esto answered that this redefines schism “so narrowly that almost no practical rebellion could qualify,” that canon law defines schism as the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with those subject to him, and that “one does not need to formally establish a ‘parallel pope’ to act schismatically in practice.” He was right. Six weeks later the Dicastery’s decree used the same logic, describing the consecrations as an act of a schismatic nature. That paragraph belonged in the article.

Two things must be said before any of it. The thread is moderated: Mr. Esto removed two comments from one interlocutor and redacted passages from two others, so anyone judging his tone, ourselves included, is reading a record with the provocations edited out of it. And he faced real provocation even in what remains. A commenter told him that seeking a middle path is a dialectical tactic that reaches the Church by way of Hegel and Marx, which makes moderation itself suspect before the argument starts. He did give a reason for it, that the “extreme” in question is simply the Catholic Faith, so it was an argument and not only an insult; but a man answering it at the end of a night shift was entitled to be short.

Still, two replies undercut the article. First, in May he wrote of the Society: “They are schismatics, though not canonically declared.” A writer whose whole case is deference to Rome should not get ahead of Rome’s judgment, and in May Rome had not made it. Six weeks later it did, which vindicates his instinct and not his method.

Second, the same reply that contained his best argument also told a commenter that “the Lefebvrean virus has already consumed you.” It then described an attitude, “I am better, so I demand everyone to bow down to me, including Rome,” and said of it: “Pathetic! So selfish and self-righteous.” In fairness those two words are predicated of the attitude rather than of the man, though a man reading them about himself would be forgiven for not making the distinction. The reply closed by praying that he would stop wasting effort in support of “the disobedience of the SSPX, the sexual scandals they are involved in, and the wounds they cause to the Mystical Body of Christ.” This came after Mr. Esto had rightly asked others to skip the drama and personal attacks and address the arguments using Catholic principles, and the standard he set was the right one. It applies to the one who set it. We would say only this: a charge of that gravity needs a citation, and it needs not to be aimed at one man as a personal reproach, whatever the record of the body he defends.

The argument that should be made

Here is the thesis the article was reaching for; we state it in a form an SSPX supporter would have to engage. The SSPX is growing, and growth is not the question. Communion with Peter is. Measured by communion, the July consecrations cost the Society nearly everything it had gained.

And that loss can be counted. In 2009 the bishops’ excommunications were lifted. From 2015 the Society’s priests could validly absolve. From 2017 they could, with the local bishop’s delegation, witness marriages. Talks with Rome continued under three popes. After 1 July the consecrating and the newly consecrated bishops were excommunicated, the Society’s priests were declared to be in schism, and the two faculties that had been given back were not merely withdrawn: the Dicastery stated that confessions heard by these priests and marriages witnessed by them are invalid. Seventeen years of repair, undone in a day. That is a real fall in canonical standing, it is documented, and it needs no redefinition of the word rise. It is also, node for node, the line the article’s own graph already draws.

One thing must be said plainly here, because a Catholic reading this on his phone outside an SSPX chapel deserves not to be frightened by a half-quotation. The decree does not excommunicate everyone who has ever attended a Society Mass. It says the lay faithful who formally adhere are excommunicated “under the conditions established in the 1996 Explanatory Note,” and it adopts that Note as its own. The Note sets a two-part test: interiorly, choosing loyalty to the movement over obedience to the Pope, and exteriorly, making that choice visible by adhering exclusively. It says in terms that occasional participation in the movement’s liturgies or activities, “without making one’s own its attitude of disunion,” does not constitute formal adherence. Cardinal Burke said the same thing in his own words two days before the consecrations. If you are the man who drives fifteen minutes to the only Latin Mass near you, the decree is not aimed at you. Ask your own priest, not the internet.

This version also answers the commenter who pointed to Pachamama, to Fr. James Martin, to doctrinal confusion in Rome. Those complaints may be just. None of them gives anyone the authority to make bishops the Pope has forbidden. Loyal resistance is a Catholic tradition. Parallel episcopal succession is not.

Mr. Esto ends more generously than a reader of our six criticisms might expect, and he should be quoted doing it. His penultimate paragraph prays “that Pope Leo XIV recognizes the possibility of unity despite differences and considers granting approval for the bishop consecrations, or that the SSPX recognizes the harm continued separation risks causing to the Mystical Body of Christ and postpones or cancels the consecrations.” A writer accused of wanting nothing but submission had, in print, asked the Pope to consider saying yes. We would not have guessed it from the headline, which is one more reason the headline does the piece a disservice.

We end where the Tridentineers began: remain in the Church and fight the evils within her. We are grateful to them for saying it, and to Mr. Esto for arguing in public under his own name and leaving the hard comments up. We offer this reply in the same spirit, as one more voice in a conversation Catholics need to keep having, out loud and with charity. If Mr. Esto wishes to answer, we will gladly publish his response, uncut.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us, for Pope Leo, and for the priests and faithful of the Society of St. Pius X.

References

1. Jonel Esto, “The Continuing Fall of the SSPX”, Epistles, 30 April 2026, with the twenty-one comments on it, eight of which are the author’s own replies. All quotations from the article and from the comment thread are taken from that page as it stood on 9 October 2026.
2. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, decree and explanatory note of 2 July 2026, as reported by Vatican News: the consecrations an “act of a schismatic nature”; the ministers of the Society “are in schism”; those who formally adhere “are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated”; the sacrament of penance administered by them and marriages assisted by them “are invalid.”
3. Andrea Tornielli, “Lefebvre’s schism repeated 38 years later”, Vatican News, July 2026.
4. John Paul II, apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, 2 July 1988, on the 1988 consecrations as a schismatic act, and on the commission of the same name.
5. Code of Canon Law, Book VI as revised in 2021, canon 1323 n. 4 and canon 1324 § 1 n. 5; canon 751 on the definition of schism.
6. Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Explanatory Note on the excommunication for schism incurred by those adhering to the movement of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, 24 August 1996, n. 4 (“there is never a necessity to ordain Bishops contrary to the will of the Roman Pontiff”) and nn. 5–7 on what formal adherence requires, including that occasional participation in the movement’s liturgies or activities, without making its attitude of disunion one’s own, does not constitute it. Expressly adopted by the Dicastery in the decree of 2 July 2026.
7. Congregation for Bishops, decree remitting the excommunication of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, 21 January 2009, signed by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, quoting Bishop Fellay’s letter of 15 December 2008 to Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos.
8. Protocol of Agreement of 5 May 1988 between Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, § 5.2, text as printed by EWTN. That page carries the Protocol alone; Lefebvre’s letter of the following day, pressing for 30 June, and Cardinal Ratzinger’s reply of the same date are separate documents, and the sequence is summarised in the account of the 1988 consecrations.
9. Society of St. Pius X, “A canonical study of the 1988 consecrations,” part 5, for the concession that “a truly schismatic act always has the character of an act harmful to souls” and for the thesis that the character of the act “arises also from the evaluation which the author has given to it.”
10. Society of St. Pius X, general statistics, retrieved 9 October 2026. The page is headed “most recently available numbers” and carries no date for the worldwide figures: houses in 77 countries, 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 brothers, 250 sisters, 88 oblate sisters, 50 nationalities represented. The bishop count on that page now reads 6, so it has been updated since July 2026. A second rendering of the same dataset, with every subsidiary figure identical and the priests given as 751, appears in the account of the 2026 consecrations. Because the two differ on one number and the source page is undated, we give a range in the text rather than assert a trend.
11. Cardinal Raymond Burke, interview with Michael Haynes for Per Mariam, published 30 June 2026: “the present situation does not constitute a state of necessity…” and “No situation justifies doing something that is intrinsically evil,” with his rejection of the rumour that all members of the Society would be excommunicated, as reported by InfoVaticana; see also Epistles.
12. Timeline of the February to July 2026 exchanges between the Dicastery and the Society, including the Dicastery’s openness to “renewed doctrinal talks” of 12 February 2026 and Cardinal Fernández’s warning of 13 May 2026: 2026 Écône consecrations.
13. St. Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, § 19, trans. W. H. Fremantle, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 6.
14. St. Pius X, encyclical Editae Saepe (1910), n. 29, the source of the line on the Epistles masthead, written there of St. Charles Borromeo.
15. Scripture quoted from the Douay-Rheims: Matthew 23:2 and 3; John 11:51; 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 24:7 and 26:9; Galatians 2:11.
16. Catholic Answers, “What went down with the SSPX”; OSV News, “9 things to know about the SSPX excommunications”.