The little world of the Traditional Mass has had to come to grips with the news, albeit long anticipated, that the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) will ordain – or in the traditional terminology which they prefer, “consecrate” – bishops on July 1. It is the feast of the Precious Blood, though only in the pre-Vatican II calendar.
The SSPX was founded to train priests in a traditional way, and this included the use of the older 1962 Latin Mass. The Society was officially suppressed in 1975, but its founder, the tough-minded retired French missionary archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, simply carried on. Discussions to bring the Society, and its increasingly far-flung network of Mass centres, back into good canonical standing failed, and the now elderly archbishop ensured the long-term survival of his foundation by consecrating four bishops in 1988, without papal mandate. He died in 1991, and two of these bishops have now also died, so there is a certain inevitability in the Society’s desire to consecrate some more.
