“A sin of extreme gravity,” warned Leo XIV, in a final address two days before to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. In reality, the first schism of the 21st century which will mark the Church as one wears a scar! This is what the four episcopal ordinations produced within the Lefebvrist community, this Wednesday, July 1, 2026. The lesson of thirty-eight years of tumult and controversy since the coronations of 1988 in the same place will not have been learned. Non bis in idem, not twice in the same way, we say in good French.
But beneath the appearance of similarity, the matter is much more serious today. Let’s quickly move on to a dramaturgy carefully orchestrated by the SSPX: an announcement five months earlier to raise the stakes and attract a large crowd. Let’s stick to the message sent.
Firstly, since yesterday, it has been clear that the fundamentalists, as they are sometimes called to distinguish them from the traditionalists faithful to Rome who also celebrate the ancient mass, accept their dissidence. Excommunicated for their disobedience, they intend to organize their autonomy in a lasting way: new bishops, some of them very young, for decades to come.
Deuzio, closed to contradiction and critical thinking, they fully assume their fallacious narrative – today one would say conspiratorial – on the Second Vatican Council, which would have been slyly adulterated by modernist ideologues.
Thirdly, firm in their doctrine, they do not deviate from the idea that the truth of faith has something to do with a character outside of time, free from human contingencies. Even though the heart of the Gospel, what the Second Vatican Council recalls, is to announce a Messiah planted on human soil, voluntarily in solidarity with the experiences of men.
A schism, certainly.
