"If the Society of St. Pius X wants to have a positive impact on church history, then it cannot fight for the true faith from a distance and from the outside against the Church united with the Pope…”
Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Rome
Vatican (kath.net) The General Council of the Society of St. Pius X published a letter of reply to Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, at its meeting in Menzingen on February 18, 2026.
It refers to the long road of intensive dialogue between the Holy See and the Society leading up to the pivotal date of June 6, 2017. Then follows a harsh attribution of sole blame at the end of this – in their view – hopeful dialogue, asserting: “But everything ultimately ended drastically through a unilateral decision by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Müller, who, in his own solemn way, established the necessary minimum requirements for full communion with the Catholic Church, explicitly including the entire Council and the ‘post-conciliar’ period.”
Since this concerns the great good of the unity of the Catholic Church, which we all profess in faith, personal sensitivities should take a back seat.
Church history teaches us how schisms, unlike heresies, also arose and solidified among orthodox Catholics. The reasons for this were human failings, theological dogmatism, and also a lack of sensitivity on the part of legitimate authority. One need only recall the Donatists, with whom St. Augustine had to contend; the controversy surrounding Jansenism, which led to the Schism of Utrecht with the illegitimate episcopal consecration of Cornelius Steenoven (October 15, 1724); and also the Old Catholics after the First Vatican Council with the illegitimate episcopal consecration of Hubert Reinkens (August 11, 1873), although this latter group, with its formal denial of the dogma of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff and his primacy of jurisdiction, ultimately descended into heresy.
However, there are clear criteria for Catholic orthodoxy and full Catholic membership, formulated since the time of the martyred bishop Ignatius of Antioch (at the beginning of the 2nd century) and increasingly refined since then, especially at the Council of Trent against the Protestants. Essential to these criteria is full communion with the universal Church and especially with the College of Bishops, which has its perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity in revealed truth in the Roman Pontiff, as the personal successor of St. Peter. While other ecclesial communities may claim to be Catholic because they agree wholly or almost entirely with the faith of the Catholic Church, they are not truly Catholic unless they also formally recognize and practice the Pope as the supreme authority and sacramental and canonical unity with him.
There is no doubt that the Society of St. Pius X agrees with the Catholic faith in substance (apart from the Second Vatican Council, which it erroneously interprets as a departure from tradition). And if it does not recognize the Second Vatican Council in whole or in part, it contradicts itself, since it rightly states that the Second Vatican Council did not present a new doctrine in the form of a defined dogma for all Catholics to believe. The Council itself is based on the clear awareness that it stands in the line of all ecumenical councils, and especially the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. Its sole purpose was to present to the faithful, in a dogmatic and profound way, the ever-valid doctrine of Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) and the Church of the Triune God (Lumen Gentium), within its entirety. Nor was the liturgy to be reformed as if it were outdated. Contrary to the progressive narrative, the Church does not need to undergo any kind of medical rejuvenation, as in a biological aging process. For it was founded once and for all by Christ, because in his divine person all newness came into the world unsurpassed and remains present in the Church's doctrine, life, and liturgy until his return at the end of history (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies IV, 34, 1). The Church, as the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, is young and alive until Judgment Day (even if some appear old within it through unbelief and sin, i.e., they refuse to overcome the old Adam within themselves).
Vatican (kath.net) The General Council of the Society of St. Pius X published a letter of reply to Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, at its meeting in Menzingen on February 18, 2026.
It refers to the long road of intensive dialogue between the Holy See and the Society leading up to the pivotal date of June 6, 2017. Then follows a harsh attribution of sole blame at the end of this – in their view – hopeful dialogue, asserting: “But everything ultimately ended drastically through a unilateral decision by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Müller, who, in his own solemn way, established the necessary minimum requirements for full communion with the Catholic Church, explicitly including the entire Council and the ‘post-conciliar’ period.”
Since this concerns the great good of the unity of the Catholic Church, which we all profess in faith, personal sensitivities should take a back seat.
Church history teaches us how schisms, unlike heresies, also arose and solidified among orthodox Catholics. The reasons for this were human failings, theological dogmatism, and also a lack of sensitivity on the part of legitimate authority. One need only recall the Donatists, with whom St. Augustine had to contend; the controversy surrounding Jansenism, which led to the Schism of Utrecht with the illegitimate episcopal consecration of Cornelius Steenoven (October 15, 1724); and also the Old Catholics after the First Vatican Council with the illegitimate episcopal consecration of Hubert Reinkens (August 11, 1873), although this latter group, with its formal denial of the dogma of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff and his primacy of jurisdiction, ultimately descended into heresy.
However, there are clear criteria for Catholic orthodoxy and full Catholic membership, formulated since the time of the martyred bishop Ignatius of Antioch (at the beginning of the 2nd century) and increasingly refined since then, especially at the Council of Trent against the Protestants. Essential to these criteria is full communion with the universal Church and especially with the College of Bishops, which has its perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity in revealed truth in the Roman Pontiff, as the personal successor of St. Peter. While other ecclesial communities may claim to be Catholic because they agree wholly or almost entirely with the faith of the Catholic Church, they are not truly Catholic unless they also formally recognize and practice the Pope as the supreme authority and sacramental and canonical unity with him.
There is no doubt that the Society of St. Pius X agrees with the Catholic faith in substance (apart from the Second Vatican Council, which it erroneously interprets as a departure from tradition). And if it does not recognize the Second Vatican Council in whole or in part, it contradicts itself, since it rightly states that the Second Vatican Council did not present a new doctrine in the form of a defined dogma for all Catholics to believe. The Council itself is based on the clear awareness that it stands in the line of all ecumenical councils, and especially the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. Its sole purpose was to present to the faithful, in a dogmatic and profound way, the ever-valid doctrine of Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) and the Church of the Triune God (Lumen Gentium), within its entirety. Nor was the liturgy to be reformed as if it were outdated. Contrary to the progressive narrative, the Church does not need to undergo any kind of medical rejuvenation, as in a biological aging process. For it was founded once and for all by Christ, because in his divine person all newness came into the world unsurpassed and remains present in the Church's doctrine, life, and liturgy until his return at the end of history (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies IV, 34, 1). The Church, as the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, is young and alive until Judgment Day (even if some appear old within it through unbelief and sin, i.e., they refuse to overcome the old Adam within themselves).
The very substance of the sacraments and their essential form are given to us and beyond any intervention by the Church (Council of Trent, Decree on Communion under One Kind, Chapter 2: DH 1728), while ecclesiastical authority is entitled to determine their ritual form, but not arbitrarily and authoritatively, rather with great respect for established ecclesiastical traditions and the sensibilities and sense of faith of the faithful. Therefore, conversely, the assertion that the Latin liturgy according to the Roman Missal and Ritual (according to the ancient rite) is illegitimate because the law of prayer is the law of faith (Pseudo-Celestine, Indiculus, Chapter 8: DH 246) is theologically false. This principle refers to the content of the faith expressed in the sacraments, not to their external ritual form, of which there have been many variations throughout Church history up to the present day. Therefore, every Catholic is entitled to criticize the motu proprio "Traditionis custodes" (2021) and its often undignified implementation by intellectually overwhelmed bishops, as well as their inadequate theological argumentation and pastoral recklessness. However, the doubt that the Holy Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI (for example, because of the possibility of concelebration, the orientation of the altar, the use of the vernacular) contradicts the Church's tradition as a normative criterion for interpreting Revelation (and is permeated by Masonic ideas) is theologically absurd and unworthy of a serious Catholic. The actual abuse of the liturgy (carnival masses, the atheist rainbow flag in the church, arbitrary changes according to one's own taste) is not to be blamed on the rite of the Novus Ordo or even the Council, but on those who, through ignorance or frivolity, are gravely guilty of these blasphemies and liturgical abuses before God and the Church.
Nor can any true Catholic be expected to accept every document that comes from Rome or an episcopal authority without criticism. Irenaeus of Lyon, Cyprian of Carthage, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena, Cardinal Bellarmine, Bishop Ketteler of Mainz (in his dealings with Pius IX), and many others have rightly complained about certain statements and actions (such as the authoritarian mass disenfranchisement of many religious orders during the last pontificate, which were arbitrarily placed under commissariat).
And so, orthodox bishops have also taken offense at more recent documents in which dogmatic and pastoral arguments have become entangled in a dilettantish manner, or when ill-considered statements have been made that—relativizing Christ—all religions are paths to God, while, with regard to Mary, Corredemptrix et Mediatrix omnium gratiarum, the sole mediatorship of Christ has been emphasized again without considering the Church's teaching on Mary's participation in Christ's work of salvation. This always happens when bishops pay more attention to public appeal than to first making use of scholarly, faith-based theology and proclaiming the word of God and the truth of the faith "in season or out of season" (2 Tim 4:2).
But looking at the entire history of the Church and theology, I am fully certain that the Church cannot be overcome by anything or anyone, not only by external opposition but also by internal turmoil.
Rightly so, not only the Society of St. Pius X, but a large part of the Catholic population laments that under the guise of Church renewal—with the process of self-secularization—great uncertainties regarding dogmatic questions and even heresies have infiltrated the Church. But, in the 2000-year history of the Church, heresies from Arianism to Modernism were only overcome by those who remained in the Church and did not turn away from the Pope.
If the Society of St. Pius X is to have a positive impact on church history, it cannot fight for the true faith from a distance, from the outside, against the Church united with the Pope, but only within the Church, with the Pope and all orthodox bishops, theologians, and faithful. Otherwise, its protest remains ineffective and is even mockingly misused by heretical groups to accuse orthodox Catholics of sterile traditionalism and narrow-minded fundamentalism. This can be seen particularly in the so-called Synodal Path, which is indeed about introducing heretical doctrines, especially in the adoption of atheistic anthropologies, and establishing a kind of Anglican church constitution (with a self-appointed church leadership of weak "yes-men" bishops and power-hungry, ideologically entrenched lay officials). This is diametrically opposed to the sacramental and apostolic constitution of the Catholic Church (Council of Trent, Decree on the Sacrament of Holy Orders, Chapter 4: DH 1767-1770; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, Articles 18-29). A German national church established by human decrees, which only symbolically recognizes the Pope as its honorary head, would no longer be Catholic, and belonging to it would not be necessary for salvation. For, as St. Augustine says: “Whoever does not love the unity of the Church does not possess the love of God. For this reason, it is rightly said: Only in the Catholic Church is the Holy Spirit received.” (De Baptismo 3, 21).
In any case, no single group, like the Donatists (the Donati pars), can oppose the acceptance of the defined doctrine of faith on behalf of the entire Church, the Catholic Church, by appealing to its own subjective conscience. To do so would require the honesty to completely renounce its unity and consequently accept the odium of a schismatic. The Second Vatican Council did not proclaim a new dogma, but rather presented the ever-valid dogmatic doctrine anew within a different intellectual and cultural-historical context. Here, nothing should be interpreted based on subjective assumptions; instead, every Catholic must inform themselves about the Church's teaching and, if necessary, allow themselves to be corrected. Matters not concerning binding doctrine of faith and morals remain open to free theological discussion. For the overall hermeneutics of the Church's faith, Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, and the (infallible) Magisterium of the Pope and bishops (especially at the Ecumenical Council) are considered the ultimate norms for understanding the revealed faith. The magisterial documents, which each claim varying degrees of authority, are to be interpreted according to the established system of theological certainty.
No orthodox Catholic can invoke reasons of conscience if he withdraws from the formal authority of the Pope regarding the visible unity of the sacramental Church in order to establish an ecclesiastical order not in full communion with him, in the form of a makeshift church, which would correspond to Protestant arguments in the 16th century. Such a schismatic stance cannot appeal to a state of emergency that can only affect the individual salvation of a few or even many souls. Anyone affected by an unjust excommunication, as even the holy Doctor of the Church Hildegard of Bingen once was, must, for the good of the Church, come to terms with this spiritually without jeopardizing the unity of the Church through disobedience. Every Catholic will agree with the young Martin Luther in his fight against the unworthy sale of indulgences and the secularization of the Church, but will sharply criticize him for disregarding the threatened excommunication, rejecting ecclesiastical authority for himself, and placing his own judgment above the judgment of the Church in the interpretation of revelation.
The well-formed conscience of a Catholic, and especially of a validly consecrated bishop and of one who is to receive episcopal consecration, will never confer or receive holy orders against the successor of St. Peter, to whom the Son of God himself entrusted the leadership of the universal Church, and thus be guilty of a grave sin against the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church of Christ as revealed by God.
The only solution possible in conscience before God is for the Society of St. Pius X, with its bishops, priests, and laity, to recognize our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV as the legitimate Pope not only in theory but also in practice, and to submit to his teaching authority and his primacy of jurisdiction without preconditions.
Then a just solution can be found for their canonical status, for example, by endowing their prelate with ordinary jurisdiction over the Society, who is directly subordinate to the Pope (perhaps without mediation through a Curial office). But these are canonical and practical consequences that will only hold true if they are dogmatically consistent with Catholic ecclesiology. The Society of St. Pius X, like every other orthodox Catholic, rightly has the duty to embrace the teachings of the First Vatican Council and to let them guide its actions: “We therefore teach and declare that, by the Lord’s decree, the Roman Church possesses the Principate of ordinary power over all others, and that this truly episcopal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is immediate, to which pastors and faithful, and pastors of every rite and rank, both each in particular and all together, are bound to hierarchical submission and true obedience, not only in matters relating to faith and morals, but also in those concerning the discipline and governance of the Church spread throughout the whole world; so that, by preserving the unity of both communion and of the same profession of faith with the Roman Pontiff, the Church of Christ is one flock under one supreme shepherd. This is the doctrine of Catholic truth, from which no one can be excluded without prejudice to his faith and his salvation may deviate." (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church "Pastor aeternus", Chapter 3: DH 3060).
Nor can any true Catholic be expected to accept every document that comes from Rome or an episcopal authority without criticism. Irenaeus of Lyon, Cyprian of Carthage, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena, Cardinal Bellarmine, Bishop Ketteler of Mainz (in his dealings with Pius IX), and many others have rightly complained about certain statements and actions (such as the authoritarian mass disenfranchisement of many religious orders during the last pontificate, which were arbitrarily placed under commissariat).
And so, orthodox bishops have also taken offense at more recent documents in which dogmatic and pastoral arguments have become entangled in a dilettantish manner, or when ill-considered statements have been made that—relativizing Christ—all religions are paths to God, while, with regard to Mary, Corredemptrix et Mediatrix omnium gratiarum, the sole mediatorship of Christ has been emphasized again without considering the Church's teaching on Mary's participation in Christ's work of salvation. This always happens when bishops pay more attention to public appeal than to first making use of scholarly, faith-based theology and proclaiming the word of God and the truth of the faith "in season or out of season" (2 Tim 4:2).
But looking at the entire history of the Church and theology, I am fully certain that the Church cannot be overcome by anything or anyone, not only by external opposition but also by internal turmoil.
Rightly so, not only the Society of St. Pius X, but a large part of the Catholic population laments that under the guise of Church renewal—with the process of self-secularization—great uncertainties regarding dogmatic questions and even heresies have infiltrated the Church. But, in the 2000-year history of the Church, heresies from Arianism to Modernism were only overcome by those who remained in the Church and did not turn away from the Pope.
If the Society of St. Pius X is to have a positive impact on church history, it cannot fight for the true faith from a distance, from the outside, against the Church united with the Pope, but only within the Church, with the Pope and all orthodox bishops, theologians, and faithful. Otherwise, its protest remains ineffective and is even mockingly misused by heretical groups to accuse orthodox Catholics of sterile traditionalism and narrow-minded fundamentalism. This can be seen particularly in the so-called Synodal Path, which is indeed about introducing heretical doctrines, especially in the adoption of atheistic anthropologies, and establishing a kind of Anglican church constitution (with a self-appointed church leadership of weak "yes-men" bishops and power-hungry, ideologically entrenched lay officials). This is diametrically opposed to the sacramental and apostolic constitution of the Catholic Church (Council of Trent, Decree on the Sacrament of Holy Orders, Chapter 4: DH 1767-1770; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, Articles 18-29). A German national church established by human decrees, which only symbolically recognizes the Pope as its honorary head, would no longer be Catholic, and belonging to it would not be necessary for salvation. For, as St. Augustine says: “Whoever does not love the unity of the Church does not possess the love of God. For this reason, it is rightly said: Only in the Catholic Church is the Holy Spirit received.” (De Baptismo 3, 21).
In any case, no single group, like the Donatists (the Donati pars), can oppose the acceptance of the defined doctrine of faith on behalf of the entire Church, the Catholic Church, by appealing to its own subjective conscience. To do so would require the honesty to completely renounce its unity and consequently accept the odium of a schismatic. The Second Vatican Council did not proclaim a new dogma, but rather presented the ever-valid dogmatic doctrine anew within a different intellectual and cultural-historical context. Here, nothing should be interpreted based on subjective assumptions; instead, every Catholic must inform themselves about the Church's teaching and, if necessary, allow themselves to be corrected. Matters not concerning binding doctrine of faith and morals remain open to free theological discussion. For the overall hermeneutics of the Church's faith, Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition, and the (infallible) Magisterium of the Pope and bishops (especially at the Ecumenical Council) are considered the ultimate norms for understanding the revealed faith. The magisterial documents, which each claim varying degrees of authority, are to be interpreted according to the established system of theological certainty.
No orthodox Catholic can invoke reasons of conscience if he withdraws from the formal authority of the Pope regarding the visible unity of the sacramental Church in order to establish an ecclesiastical order not in full communion with him, in the form of a makeshift church, which would correspond to Protestant arguments in the 16th century. Such a schismatic stance cannot appeal to a state of emergency that can only affect the individual salvation of a few or even many souls. Anyone affected by an unjust excommunication, as even the holy Doctor of the Church Hildegard of Bingen once was, must, for the good of the Church, come to terms with this spiritually without jeopardizing the unity of the Church through disobedience. Every Catholic will agree with the young Martin Luther in his fight against the unworthy sale of indulgences and the secularization of the Church, but will sharply criticize him for disregarding the threatened excommunication, rejecting ecclesiastical authority for himself, and placing his own judgment above the judgment of the Church in the interpretation of revelation.
The well-formed conscience of a Catholic, and especially of a validly consecrated bishop and of one who is to receive episcopal consecration, will never confer or receive holy orders against the successor of St. Peter, to whom the Son of God himself entrusted the leadership of the universal Church, and thus be guilty of a grave sin against the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church of Christ as revealed by God.
The only solution possible in conscience before God is for the Society of St. Pius X, with its bishops, priests, and laity, to recognize our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV as the legitimate Pope not only in theory but also in practice, and to submit to his teaching authority and his primacy of jurisdiction without preconditions.
Then a just solution can be found for their canonical status, for example, by endowing their prelate with ordinary jurisdiction over the Society, who is directly subordinate to the Pope (perhaps without mediation through a Curial office). But these are canonical and practical consequences that will only hold true if they are dogmatically consistent with Catholic ecclesiology. The Society of St. Pius X, like every other orthodox Catholic, rightly has the duty to embrace the teachings of the First Vatican Council and to let them guide its actions: “We therefore teach and declare that, by the Lord’s decree, the Roman Church possesses the Principate of ordinary power over all others, and that this truly episcopal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is immediate, to which pastors and faithful, and pastors of every rite and rank, both each in particular and all together, are bound to hierarchical submission and true obedience, not only in matters relating to faith and morals, but also in those concerning the discipline and governance of the Church spread throughout the whole world; so that, by preserving the unity of both communion and of the same profession of faith with the Roman Pontiff, the Church of Christ is one flock under one supreme shepherd. This is the doctrine of Catholic truth, from which no one can be excluded without prejudice to his faith and his salvation may deviate." (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church "Pastor aeternus", Chapter 3: DH 3060).
