The SSPX is often referred to in the secular media as an “ultra-traditionalist” or “extremist” body. This risks exhausting the adjectives needed to describe the many groups who self-identify as Catholic. For one thing, the SSPX has itself been divided. Some members have decided that submission to Rome is a sine qua non, and formed societies that preserve traditional liturgy while reconciling with the Vatican. Others have left the SSPX, feeling that it has compromised too far with modernity.
The most recent case is the “SSPX Resistance”, which broke away when a Vatican deal seemed near under Benedict XVI. It is led by Bishop Richard Williamson, whose views on the Holocaust led him to be convicted of “incitement to hatred” by a German court. Bishop Williamson has consecrated two new bishops, confirming the Resistance’s separation from the SSPX.
