SSPX priest says Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer may have “gone full sedevacantist” after open letter

A well-known priest of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) has suggested that the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, may have entered a new phase of rupture with the Catholic Church following their recent open letter.

Writing anonymously, the priest told The Catholic Herald, “I very much doubt they will be trying to work with us[SSPX]. I think they have gone full sedevacantist. They used to be prior to their reconciliation in 2007”.

The SSPX priest also suggested that there is at least tacit sympathy or alignment between the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer and Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the excommunicated Italian traditionalist. 

On October 16 Archbishop Vigano issued a statement on the website of Exsurge Domine,a foundation he founded in order to support clerics, religious and consecrated lay people who do not conform to the Bergoglian revolution. 

In the statement, entitled Tolle Missam, tolle Ecclesiam (Take away the Mass, take away the Church`) Viganò praised the community for what he described as their courageous stand against “the conciliar-synodal church”, writing that “after seventeen years of tensions with the Vatican and with the Bishop of Christchurch in New Zealand,” the community had denounced “the principal errors of the conciliar-synodal church, its open hostility toward the Apostolic Mass, and the malpractices to which the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer have been subjected.”

Archbishop Viganò said that he, together with the Exsurge Domine Foundation  offered the The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer “full support, in the absence and complicit silence of fearful and cowardly pastors.”

The statement came the day after the monks released an “Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops, Priests, Religious and Faithful”. The letter accuses the modern Church of betraying the faith of the saints and of embracing errors born of the Second Vatican Council.

“Through years of trials and experiences we have come to the unfortunate conclusion that the Traditional Catholic Faith … is incompatible with the new, modern Church,” it stated. “They simply cannot coexist in unity with each other.”

The letter, running to several pages, rejects a series of papal and curial documents including Amoris Laetitia, Traditionis Custodes, and Fiducia Supplicans. It calls the reforms of recent pontificates a “false theology of ‘sister churches’ and ‘partial communion’,” accuses bishops of “destroying the Church,” and insists that “authority in the Church is ministerial, not absolute.”

“The chain of command has been broken,” the monks wrote. “We will not be complicit by silence in this ongoing destruction of the Church.” The letter concludes with the appeal: “To all who read this: How long will all this nonsense go on? … Whatever may be said to us, with the Apostle we must say: Anathema!”

A week later Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB of Aberdeen issued his own letter describing the The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer’s text as “incompatible with the Catholic sense of the Church’s unity”. 

Dated 24 October, his notice confirmed that the Holy See was examining the matter and that alternative arrangements had been made for the celebration of the older rite of Mass in his diocese. 

The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, were founded in 1988 by priest Fr Michael Mary Sim amid the turbulence following Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s episcopal consecrations for the Society of St Pius X (SSPX).

Initially based in England and later relocating to the island of Papa Stronsay in the Orkneys, the community lived for two decades maintaining a union with  SSPX and sharing its opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Their reconciliation with the Holy See came in 2008 under Pope Benedict XVI, who lifted canonical penalties and paved the way for their formal recognition as a diocesan institute in 2012. 

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