The Society of Saint Pius X has issued a formal rebuke of the position taken by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter regarding the Society’s planned episcopal consecrations on 1 July.

The response was set out in a detailed text published under the name of Father Jean-Michel Gleize, a long-standing professor of apologetics, ecclesiology and dogma at the seminary of Écône. Father Gleize also took part in doctrinal discussions between Rome and the Society between 2009 and 2011.

His intervention follows the publication on 11 April of a study entitled “Legitimate consecrations?” attributed to priests of the Fraternity of Saint Peter and signed “Theologus”. That text sought to challenge the argument advanced by the Society of Saint Pius X in defence of its intention to consecrate bishops without papal mandate later this year, describing the Society’s case as insufficient.

“These were primarily the priests of the then-nascent Fraternity of Saint Peter,” Fr Gleize wrote, adding that they “present[ed] the initiative of the consecrations as resulting in a non-Catholic episcopate, a schismatic episcopate, an episcopate conveying an implicit heresy.”

He said this line of reasoning, associated in particular with the founder of the FSSP, Father Josef Bisig, and later developed by Father Philippe de Blignières, continues to shape the Fraternity’s position.

The latest study, he argued, follows the same pattern but attempts to engage directly with arguments put forward by the Society in view of the July consecrations. It also includes a commendation from Cardinal Robert Sarah, who described the text as “luminous”, “marvellous, clear, and well-researched”.

Cardinal Sarah’s remarks, cited in full, state: “We must know that it is not we who save souls. It is Christ alone who saves. We are merely instruments in His hands.” He also repeats a formulation associated with Father Bisig: “It is not we who save the Church, but the Church that saves us.”

Father Gleize takes issue with both the theological framing and the method of the Fraternity’s critique. He argues that the 11 April study fails at the outset by misidentifying what it calls “the fundamental argument of the Society of Saint Pius X in defence of the planned consecrations for 1 July 2026”. According to the text, this argument is “officially summarised in an annex to Father Pagliarani’s response to the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, on 18 February 2026”.

“This is where everything already falls apart,” Father Gleize writes, insisting that the annex in question is “nothing more and nothing less than an ‘appendix’”, intended only to address a technical point of ecclesiology and to serve as “a secondary support” to the Society’s principal case.

He states that the real argument is set out elsewhere, pointing to a letter sent by the Society’s Superior General, Father Davide Pagliarani, to Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, as well as a sermon delivered at the seminary of Flavigny on 2 February and further remarks given on 7 February during a gathering organised by the Society’s French District.

“This ‘fundamental argument’ rests on the reality of the state of necessity,” Father Gleize writes, describing it as a condition which, in the Society’s view, “once again demands the consecration of new, fully Catholic bishops for the salvation of souls”.

He argues that this point is “completely obscured” in the Fraternity’s analysis, which he says instead directs attention to “one or another point of the new ecclesiology of Vatican II”. While acknowledging that such theological questions are not without importance, he describes them as secondary in the present context.

“The priests of the Fraternity of Saint Peter, in a pointed and difficult analysis, divert their readers’ attention,” he writes, adding that these discussions “avoid confronting the true reason that justifies consecrations: the state of necessity, the generalised crisis from which the Church is far from having emerged”.

Father Gleize states that priests of communities established under the provisions of Ecclesia Dei afflicta “too often avoid speaking about this state of necessity”, stating that it is “this state of necessity alone that justifies the initiative for consecrations”.

He links this argument to developments since 1988, suggesting that assurances given at that time have not been maintained and pointing to the impact of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes, issued by Pope Francis, on communities attached to the older liturgical forms.

The text sets out the Society’s position in conditional terms. “Undoubtedly, yes,” Father Gleize writes, “if there is no state of emergency, if the Church is in a normal state, if the Pope acts as a true Vicar of Christ to exercise his power for the salvation of souls… then yes, it is not legitimate to consecrate bishops against the Pope’s will.”

“But it is the extraordinary circumstance of the crisis,” he continues, “that makes all the difference.”

He concludes by stating: “The legalism of the Fraternity of Saint Peter flees from the wolf and abandons the sheep.”

The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter was founded in the aftermath of the 1988 crisis in the Society of Saint Pius X, when Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre proceeded with the episcopal consecrations of four bishops, triggering automatic excommunication. A group of priests and seminarians within the SSPX refused to follow and, led by Father Josef Bisig, with the personal encouragement of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the approval of Pope John Paul II, founded the FSSP on 18 July 1988 at the Abbey of Hauterive in Switzerland.