I was just alerted to this at Rorate. I am glad to read this. On the other hand, it might not go the way one might hope for.
The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) filed an appeal against the decisions of the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) — a canonical possibility which we mentioned here the day following its publication.
Here is the Communiqué of the SSPX General House:
Communiqué of 13 July 2026.
The Society of Saint Pius X announces that, in response to the decree issued on 2 July 2026 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, it submitted on 11 July a preliminary recourse to the same Dicastery, in accordance with canons 1734 and following of the Code of Canon Law.
This request, which constitutes the mandatory preliminary step before the possible introduction of a hierarchical recourse, has the effect of suspending the execution of the decree, in accordance with canon 1353 of the Code of Canon Law.
By this recourse, the Society intends to exercise the right which the Church recognizes to any person who considers himself harmed by an administrative act to seek its correction, in a spirit of respect for ecclesiastical authority and of faithful attachment to justice, truth and the good of the Church.
The Society of Saint Pius X entrusts this request to the competent authorities and commends this undertaking to the prayers of all the faithful.
Menzingen, 13 July 2026
I am very hopeful, I believe the SSPX bishops, for all that can be said don’t want to die outside of communion.
Is it true that the penalties are suspended per the submission of this appeal?
One cannot fault them for trying.
But what a mess this (the “suspensive effect” canon 1353 speaks of) makes, adding yet another layer of uncertainty regarding the sacraments administred by SSPX priests (as well as the 6 bishops). And I guess the full canonical procedures will take quite some time.
I’d even go so far as to wonder if a direct action from the pope personally – even if it would be an excommunication – wouldn’t be preferable. At least there would be no legal vagueness, no appeal possible. Only reconcilliatoon (or not).
Serious Question:
As a lay person speaking for other lay catholics, not affiliated with the SSPX in any way, I find myself directly harmed by these degrees (decrees which directly attempt to condition my specific actions and practice of the Faith) because 1.) Unjustly limits my access to valid Masses 2.) Unjustly limits my access to valid confession. 3.) Creates disunity and recriminations between my parish and other Roman Catholics by preventing my associating with my spiritual (and familial) brothers and sisters.
As a lay Catholic, what recourse do I (we) have in this matter?
I don’t mean this as a “gotcha”, but one wonders why the Society would appeal if, according to their reckoning, the excommunications were merely putative from the beginning. Are they trying to get a formal opinion on their notion of the state of necessity? Or could it be that behind closed doors, some of their leadership recognize that the canonical penalty has actually applied.
Unless the SSPX are prepared to abide by the decision of the Signature – which given their pronouncements one may doubt – this is an action taken in bad faith. Do the SSPX even accept the 1983 code of canon law?
More from Rorate: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/07/archbishop-pozzo-former-head-of.html
Tangentially, I’ve just become aware of the Venetian epistolary pamphlet headed “Jesus Christus Mariae Virginis filius Julio II. vicario nostro indigno” which ends “Data ex caelo Nostro empireo die 26 Decembris, anno Nostras Nativitatis in saeculo, 1509” and bears the attestation “Joannes Evangelista de mandato subscripsi” . The full Italian text is in volume nine (1879) of I Diarii di Marino Sanuto in columns 567-70 (“Page 287 (295/367)” of the Getty Research Institute scan in the Internet Archive).
The English-language history in which I encountered it gives this taste: “Christ died, so ran the contents, to redeem mankind; He chose His disciples to hand on the testimony of His gracious will; He committed to them the administration of all things which concerned men’s salvation. This pastoral office was well discharged by S. Peter; let Julius compare himself with that example. Has he shown Peter’s humility, gentleness, and love for souls? Has he not been the cause of deeds of blood and shame? ‘Numbers of souls,’ so Christ is made to say, ‘have gone to perdition for whom We, who created heaven and earth, suffered such bitter passion; ay, and We would suffer it anew, to save one of the least of all those who through your fault have gone into eternal fire, and who call to Us for vengeance on your wicked deeds. All this evil comes from your desire for temporal rule ; and the ill that has befallen is but a small part of what will follow if you do not amend. Think for a moment; if one of your servants withstood your designs about temporal things, how great would be your anger, how severe his punishment. What then shall We do, whose wishes for men’s salvation are being withstood by you? We use the rod of correction before We draw the sword of judgment.'”
@haydn seeker
Yes, the SSPX accept the 1983 code
Thanks for that link, davidpaulyoung.
Abp Pozzo speaks with great wisdom. Especially the part where he speaks of “errors within the Church (but not of the Church)” (italics in original).
While it can be very painful to watch, none of the antics of certain parts of the clergy should be taken as justification to rebel against authority. That’s too easy. That it would befit Rome to use a sledgehammer more often than they do on leftists, and that said sledgehammer seems to unduely land on traditionalist at times is on the heads of those in governance. It does not mean a duty to rebel against authority, regardless of whether that would be an effective way to change those in charge, let alone the Pope.
Nor does the SSPX have a right to sit in judgement on whether Pope or council is promulgating Error in dogmatic terms (I won’t repeat a lengthy post on that from last week).
And unfortunately, I’m not surprised that the SSPX itself preferred to stay outside rather than be fully reconciled and regularized. Both points above sum up to the idea that rather than trying to achieve something for their own society and the Catholics they serve, they have it as their aim to change the Vatican. And drastically too: even before the consacrations this year, one got the impression that significant parts of the society would prefer to ‘hold out’, only returning on their conditions, which would be summarized, with only a little exaggeration, as a wholesale repudiation of everything written by the Vatican in the last 70 years or so. Which is obviously deluded.
I have not yet seen any Canon Lawyers commenting, but Gaetano Masciullo has an interesting post entitled “SSPX files canonical appeal against Vatican’s excommunication decree” at Lifesite News, dated “Tue Jul 14, 2026 – 10:24 am EDT”, which includes “If the preliminary recourse were to be rejected or no response given, the Society may then turn to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, which acts as the administrative court of justice for disputes concerning acts of administrative authority (cc. 1739 and 1445).”
@Phil_NL2
At this point it is disingenuous to pretend that the bad things are just coming from random fringe priests, especially after Francis. Church leaders are the ones doing the damage. Church leaders push the error that the Church was somehow wrong about Capital Punishment for thousands of years. Cardinals are celebrating LGBTQ+ Masses, sometimes in St. Peter’s. Cardinals and bishops and popes have covered up priestly abuse cases. Pope Francis pushed for homosexual couple blessings and Communion for divorced and remarried people. Pope Leo calls for endless immigration to the West and meets with the likes of Jimmy Martin to encourage him, not reprimand him. Pope Francis started the effort to suppress the sacred liturgical tradition of the Church, and Pope Leo is continuing it.
There is a crisis in the Church. There are errors being promulgated within the Church. The Church leaders are the ones creating the crisis and promulgating the errors. No amount of wishful thinking changes this reality.
And while the average layman may lack the canonical authority to declare a Church leader a heretic, it is a denial of his God given faculties of observation and reason to deny him the ability to call a spade a spade. Even Cabin Law recognizes this.
Very smart move
@davidpaulyoung Adding my thanks for this link. A lot of important stuff here.
@Phil_NL2 I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Thank you for this succinct analysis.
This quote troubles me the most:
“Pope Francis, informed of the negative outcome, decided to suppress the Ecclesia Dei Commission — which since 2009 had been engaged in doctrinal conversations with the SSPX’s Superior with a view to achieving a reconciliation — and transferred competence for any future relations with the SSPX to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
Has this ever really been discussed? I don’t remember anyone explicitly stating that the decision to quash the Ecclesia Dei Commission was a direct result of the SSPX’s response to this matter.
All along, especially since Traditionis Custodes dropped, we’ve been lionizing the SSPX for being able to operate without these restrictions.
But what if much of what the lovers of Tradition in the Church have had to suffer in these recent years is essentially (at least partially justified, from the Vatican’s point of view) backlash toward the stiffnecked “deluded” (to use your word, Phil_NL2) actions of the SSPX? The more we uncover about their actual doctrinal positions lately, the more we are seeing that they are entirely willing to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Strain out a gnat and swallow a camel indeed.
Judge that however you like, but this is a horse of a different color…
(And before anyone jumps down my throat to claim that I’m willing to sacrifice doctrine in order to [fill in the blank] I’m not suggesting that, but at the same time, a willingness to sacrifice the unity of the Church in order to try to force the Vatican to roll back the clock to 1962 is neither realistic nor helpful either.)
WVC wrote, “ Church leaders are the ones doing the damage. Church leaders push the error that the Church was somehow wrong about Capital Punishment for thousands of years.”
That’s exactly right.
“ And while the average layman may lack the canonical authority to declare a Church leader a heretic, it is a denial of his God given faculties of observation and reason to deny him the ability to call a spade a spade.”
I don’t have any idea what to do about it other than hold on for dear life. To whom shall we go? I wish the bishops would understand or care what kind of distress this causes many of us. And it should distress them too.
WVC
The point is : even so, that still doesn’t excuse a mindset where they demand – not request, but set as a condition – that the Vatican correct its errors according to their definition of it. Both the ‘demand’ part and they setting the list are unacceptable, no matter the extent of the crisis. One either endures the mistakes of the ones in authority (and there’s well over a millenium of that sufficiently documented, with excommunications for petty political reasons being par for the course, for example) or one says that the Church is no longer Catholic, but then one should accept that out of you and the pope, one of the two is a schismatic. I note that the SSPX doesn’t, to my knowledge, want to go there in a formal sense, but they do seems to try the have-your-cake-and-eat-it approach on this front.
I for one prefer, very much, to separate the Church from the mistakes made by those in it, but the flip side of that coin is that I have to accept that I still have to listen to failing men in charge.
So in sum, I maintain that for this aspect of the discussion, whatever wrong is being done by hierarchs, it remains irrelevant.
From Phil_NL2:
But what a mess this (the “suspensive effect” canon 1353 speaks of) makes, adding yet another layer of uncertainty
Indeed, it’s even worse than would appear at first glance. Because penalty of excommunication is levied “automatically” for certain acts including acts of schism, it is not entirely clear that an appeal CAN suspend the penalty. (Sometimes this penalty is characterized as being caused “by the act itself”, but I would suggest a distinction that the “automatic” imposition is “by the immediate force of the law itself” rather than by the mere ACT itself, as the penalty wouldn’t happen if the law hadn’t been prescribed.) This highlights really important problems with the very cast of “latae sententiae” penalties. Another is that (Canon 1323) an automatic penalty doesn’t apply if the person doing the act doesn’t know it applies, and then you get into a whole snake-eating-tail discussion of whether you know the act has this penalty if you don’t know (aren’t positive) the act is RIGHTLY considered schismatic, and whether you are protected from the penalty if you erroneously thought the act is not schismatic – and then another round of whether your lack of knowledge was, itself, in good conscience or not, and WHO IS TO JUDGE that matter: if the imposition of the penalty cannot be held to be certain until a priest / confessor / canonist examines your state of mind as to your sincere or non-sincere ignorance, is it really “automatic”? Another exception is if the person “4° 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;. I am not a canonist, but “grave fear, even if only relative” and “grave inconvenience” appear sufficiently vague that they could be applied to nearly every lay person who goes to the SSPX masses, and probably to most of the priests. Again, is an ordinary lay person, or ordinary confessor, capable of judging their state in this respect, and has he the authority to decide?
Canonist Edward Peters has opined that the whole category of latae sententiae penalties should be abolished, and this shows there’s good reason for that position.
Discerning Altar Boy:
I don’t mean this as a “gotcha”, but one wonders why the Society would appeal if, according to their reckoning, the excommunications were merely putative from the beginning.
They might do so in order to get a clarification that the penalty is NOT to be held as already applying (as of July 1) to all the priests, or at least not all of the lay people who regularly go to SSPX masses. That is, suggesting not even the Vatican – on their own grounds and positions – should hold it to be already applicable to the laity as of July 1. (For example: what about people who went to confession after July 1 but BEFORE hearing about the excommunication decree and explanatory note: is the confession invalid as such?)
Or could it be that behind closed doors, some of their leadership recognize that the canonical penalty has actually applied.
It is also possible that the appeal is meant as a toe in the door to re-start discussions with the Vatican, this time “behind closed doors”, to do any number of things, e.g. agreement to take excommunication of the laity off the table, or to rescind the THREAT that SSPX confessions are now invalid, perhaps for some concessions the SSPX won’t like… etc.
@ hayden seeker:
Unless the SSPX are prepared to abide by the decision of the Signature – which given their pronouncements one may doubt – this is an action taken in bad faith. Do the SSPX even accept the 1983 code of canon law?
Yes, the SSPX accepts the status of the 1983 Canon Law. The above point provides a good-faith basis for the appeal (i.e. for clarification), so we must assume that it is in good faith at least to that extent.
And I agree with Fr. Reader:
Very smart move
Even if the appeal ultimately fails, at least on the surface they achieve a delay of the penalty, possibly for quite a long time. Much can happen in that time, who knows how it will play out, God has his own plans that might not match the Vatican bureaucracy’s plans.
davidpaulyoung points us to a worthwhile analysis by Archbishop Pozz. I would ask the archbishop whether, alongside the points of concession asked of the SSPX in 2018, was (or is) the Vatican at all willing to make concessions like “the so-called “reform” of the mass that was encapsulated by the Novus Ordo and later practice was not faithful in every respect to the program stated in Sacrosanctum Concilium, and therefore correctives may be appropriate.” Or, to make it simpler, an outright rejection of an off the cuff comment of Francis that the reform that happened was the will of the Spirit and “infallible”.
@TonyO
Thanks for those extra layers of analysis! Makes one wonder about a couple of things:
– as both knowledge (of the law, applied in the way the judge (!) would deem appropriate) and state of mind are notoriously hard to prove, it would be hard to make a case against any individual person without his cooperation. In that sense, one could make a canonical process into a pulpit – as may be the aim, as suggested above. It seems rather ill suited to establish guilt or innocence (which has a function, as it could at least provide some level of clarity to others, e.g. those attending SSPX Masses).
– Dr Peters has indeed good reasons for his positions, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he at some point gets additional examples to support his recommendations out of this episode. The one counterargument that gives me pause is that even grevious, overt canonical crimes would then always need intervention from a bishop or the Vatican. (Not holding my breath, to put it mildly). So I see plenty of ways in which, by the omissions rightly deplored on this blog (WVC, above), this might practically make things just as bad as they’re now.
– Perhaps worse even, a wholesale overhaul of canon law would be called for, in the sense that this seems very inadequate to the task at hand when it’s not a single person making a misstep, but a large group, with varying degrees of involvement. I’m still temped by my earlier suggestion, that in such cases not a legal process is desired, but an unequivocal, and unappealable, statement from the Pope.
– Who would want to be a canon laywer, unless one believes a considerable discount for time already spent in earthly purgatories is needful?
@Phil_NL2
I suggest a little more caution with how you frame things.
When the Cardinals submitted a dubia to Pope Francis, were they seeking clarity or making demands?
When the African bishops rejected the notion of non liturgical blessings for homosexual couples, were they acting in accordance with their conscious? Or demanding the Pope correct himself?
Those calling for Traditiones Custodes to be overturned, are they asking for mercy to be shown to Catholics devoted to the Latin Mass, or are they making demands to the Pope?
Or is it just the SSPX who is guilty of making “demands”?
My understanding was once the Vatican officially stated the excommunications, they were no longer late sententiae, but rather declared. Once declared they become appealable. That was my understanding.
@WVC
The crucial difference is that none of the cases you mention, the side making ‘demands’ threatened to respond, in case of less than the desired reply, by defying authority, consacrating bishops, or risking schism (note that even a situation where the question of schism can be reasonable raised is detrimental to the Church’s unity).
There’s ‘demand’ as in ‘asking’, and on the other hand ‘demand’ as in ‘commanding’, or ‘ordering with a threat’, or, see the 2nd line of my post, ‘imposing conditions’ and the SSPX, if my reading of the situation is correct, was very much doing it in the second sense. It was not “could you please…?” rather than “you must, or else…”
An unkind way to phrase the distinction would be to compare supplication and blackmail… There’s probably no benefit in putting it that starkly, but on the other hand, I do think the point was clear.
@Phil_NL2
Defying authority? Detrimental to the unity of the Church? How, exactly, did the case of the African bishops not fall into these categories?
Imposing conditions? Where, precisely, does the SSPX “impose conditions” on the Vatican? Can you provide actual quotations and not more of your personal framing of their position? Have you read what the SSPX has actually publicly said over the past year, or only news reports summarizing what they’ve said?