Bishop Schneider backs urgent appeal asking Pope Leo XIV to support SSPX consecrations

(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider has backed a petition urging Pope Leo XIV to support the Society of St. Pius X’s (SSPX) upcoming consecration of bishops so that the traditional priestly society will not be considered excommunicated by the Vatican.

“We humbly ask Your Holiness to grant the Society of St. Pius X your blessing, the pontifical mandatum, for the July 1st consecration of bishops without pre-conditions,” reads the petition, which supporters are invited to sign here. 

PETITION: Urgent appeal to Pope Leo XIV to support the Priestly Society of St. Pius X

The petition welcomes Pope Leo’s encouragement to Eastern Catholics soon after he took the papal office, sharing that Latin Church Catholics had hoped that the Pope “would in due time grant to us full freedom to live our Latin Rite traditions … a freedom our Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ enjoy, but a liberty too often restricted or denied to us today by ecclesiastical authorities.”

By Latin Rite traditions, the Traditional Latin Mass and sacraments are meant.

“We pray that Your Holiness, seeing a good number of Latin Rite Catholics drawing their spiritual vigor and sustained in their Catholic Faith by recourse to the fullness of their traditional Latin Rite heritage, might graciously and generously acknowledge, bless and encourage them in their fidelity to their spiritual patrimony, just as you did Catholics of the Eastern tradition last year,” the petition says.

The petition stresses that Leo alone can grant the Vatican’s full recognition of the SSPX, which it calls the “most prominent” proponent of the traditions of the Latin Rite.

“Therefore, we the undersigned, moved by a sincere love for souls and Holy Mother Church, and weighed down with sorrow at the troubles presently assailing her members, wish to express to Your Holiness our desire to support the Priestly Society of St. Pius X in its long-standing praiseworthy work for souls,” it continues.

The petition points out that Pope Francis had granted the SSPX faculties for confession and had authorized bishops to delegate those faculties to SSPX priests for particular marriages.

“We appeal to Your Holiness at this critical moment in the life of the Church to now exercise that same fatherly mercy toward the Society of St. Pius X with that same magnanimity of which only the Successor of St. Peter is capable,” the petition reads. 

The petition notes that should Leo support the SSPX’s July 1 consecrations, he “may do much to avert a hardening of divisions in the Church and a practical separation of good and faithful Catholics that might otherwise be prolonged for decades” or much longer, such as in the Great Schism of 1054.

“The consecration of bishops in the Society of St. Pius X would not in any way threaten those who may perceive the Society as a threat. Rather, it would allow a good number of faithful Catholics desiring the sacred patrimony of the Latin Church—its liturgical, devotional, disciplinary and spiritual heritage—to live their traditional form of Catholic life unmolested, at peace with the rest of the Church,” it reads.

The SSPX General House revealed earlier this year that Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the heterodox prefect of the DDF, has made clear that the Second Vatican Council documents must be accepted in full by the SSPX to achieve “regular” status in the Church.

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However, Fernández’s demand of SSPX’s full acceptance of Vatican II texts is at odds with Archbishop Guido Pozzo’s clarification in 2016 that “some texts of the Council … are not doctrinal and are thus not binding on the Catholic conscience,” as journalist Maike Hickson put it. Pozzo specifically named texts with which the SSPX takes issue, including Nostra Aetate about interreligious dialogue, the decree Unitatis Redintegratio on ecumenism, and the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty. He explained:

They are not about doctrines or definitive statements, but, rather, about instructions and orienting guides for pastoral practice. One can [thus legitimately] continue to discuss these pastoral aspects after the [proposed] canonical approval [of the SSPX], in order to lead us to further [and acceptable] clarifications.

Theologians and prelates such as Bishop Schneider have also pointed out that the lack of a schismatic intention on the part of the SSPX precludes a valid excommunication, as canon law makes clear.

The petition also points out that to his knowledge “there are no weighty reasons in order to deny the clergy and faithful of the SSPX the official canonical recognition,” and notes that “the SSPX believes, worships and conducts a moral life as it was demanded and recognized by the Supreme Magisterium and was observed universally in the Church during a centuries long period.”

Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, shared last month that Pope Leo XIV had still not replied to their request to meet prior to the planned consecration date of July 1.

“Before possibly declaring schismatic a society which counts more than a thousand members, and which serves as a point of reference for hundreds of thousands of faithful throughout the world, it might be desirable to know personally those who are to be judged,” he said.