ROME
Crux
Austen Ivereigh April 6, 2017
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
The breakaway traditionalist group the Society of St. Pius X is rumored to be closer than ever to coming back into full communion with the Catholic Church. But recent revelations on how the SSPX has handled sex abuse allegations should cause the Vatican to put a halt to any proposed reconciliation, until there can be a guarantee that child safety norms are followed.
In the will-they-won’t-they saga of the traditionalist breakaway group SSPX reconciling with Rome, there always seems to be a last-minute snag or ugly revelation that scuppers the deal.
The most recent was in March 2012, when the Society of Pius X, a wealthy schismatic group with 600 priests in 37 countries, rejected Benedict XVI’s offer of an Opus Dei-type personal prelature in exchange for accepting certain criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine.
SSPX, which regards as heresy the Second Vatican Council’s teachings on religious freedom and other faiths, demanded, as it always does, that if Rome wanted them back, they would have to take them as they were. And to make clear this wasn’t just an argument about the 1960s, they cited Benedict’s hosting of an inter-religious summit in Assisi and even his beatification of Pope John Paul II as additional stumbling blocks.
The traditionalists’ current leader, Archbishop Bernard Fellay, declared at the time that “it is our duty to continuously go [to Rome], knock at the door, and not beg that we may enter – because we are in – but beg that they may convert; that they may change and come back to what makes the Church.”
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