SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield called the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) “another Protestant sect” in a video addressed to his diocese last week, responding to the order’s consecration of four new bishops without a papal mandate earlier this month.
In the video, published July 13 and entitled “The Main Problem with the SSPX,” Paprocki noted that just before the consecrations, the SSPX issued a 154-point profession of faith to Pope Leo XIV and the world’s cardinals that included sharp criticisms of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar reforms. The bishop argued that because the Society rejects certain teachings of the Council and disobeyed the sovereign pontiff by performing the consecrations, it is “basically another Protestant sect.”
“By disobeying the pope and rejecting the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the Society of Saint Pius X is now basically another Protestant sect that thinks that they are right and the pope is wrong,” Paprocki said in the video.
The question of accepting each document of the Second Vatican Council was a sticking point between the SSPX and the Vatican before the July 1 consecrations.
A February communiqué from the SSPX General House published after Superior General Fr. Davide Pagliarani’s meeting with Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández claimed that the cardinal proposed dialogue with the SSPX to clarify the minimum necessary requirements for the SSPX’s canonical status. Fernández had already made clear that the Second Vatican Council documents must be accepted in full by the SSPX to reach such “regular” status.
READ: Cardinal Fernández tells SSPX superior that Vatican II documents ‘cannot be corrected’
Several prominent Catholic prelates, including Bishop Athanasius Schneider, have defended the Society’s position on the Second Vatican Council, arguing that, as this was a pastoral council, the documents can indeed be corrected and the Society, along with all the faithful, is therefore not obliged to accept each of the Council’s documents in order to maintain communion with the Church, as the Vatican has claimed.
“Why is the unconditional acceptance of the texts of Vatican II presented as a conditio sine qua non for full communion with the Holy See, while no comparable requirement exists with respect to the pastoral, disciplinary, or non-definitive teachings of the preceding 20 Ecumenical Councils?” Schneider pondered in a recent article.
“Among the non-definitive teachings of Vatican II, there are several — particularly those concerning religious liberty, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and collegiality — whose formulations are ambiguous and difficult to reconcile with doctrines taught consistently by the Magisterium from the era of the Church Fathers through the period immediately preceding the Council,” His Excellency added.
Other prelates, however, such as Bishop Marian Eleganti, have agreed with Paprocki and said the consecrations constitute a “schismatic mindset” that they demonstrate by acting independently of the authority of the Vatican and thus the Church.
“Firstly, acting with full autonomy without papal mandate or confirmed mission; secondly, operating with bishops not in union with the Pope and the episcopal college; thirdly, maintaining hundreds of priests who are not incardinated; and finally, existing in a kind of jurisdictional nirvana through self-authorization, considering themselves the only true Catholics, with the only true sacraments, at least without defects, and the only true doctrine,” Eleganti stated.
“They claim not to want a Church beside the Church while creating one and behaving in a way that corresponds exactly to that,” he added.