The National Register reports that the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has issued an open letter and a so-called “declaration of faith” to the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV and the College of Cardinals on June 24, 2026. This theatrical move comes ahead of an extraordinary consistory and the SSPX’s planned episcopal consecrations on July 1 without papal approval. The Vatican has warned these consecrations would constitute a schismatic act resulting in automatic excommunication. The SSPX’s declaration contains 154 statements supposedly defending traditional teachings on sacraments, divine revelation, the Virgin Mary, rejection of ecumenism, and fidelity to the Traditional Latin Mass. This entire episode reveals the bankruptcy of those pretending to be traditional Catholics who, while rejecting some post-conciliar novelties, continue to acknowledge the very source of the Church’s destruction.
The Illusion of Tradition Without Authority
The SSPX’s declaration claims that “Tradition contains all the remedies for the deepest ills afflicting the Church and the world.” Yet this statement is rendered meaningless by their continued acknowledgment of the conciliar authorities who systematically destroyed that very Tradition. As Pope Pius XI taught in *Quas Primas*: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and “His reign extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The SSPX’s error is precisely the reduction of this kingship to a private devotional society, severed from the visible social reign of Christ through His true Church.
The 154 statements in their declaration are, in reality, a carefully curated selection of acceptable pre-conciliar teachings that avoid the central question: Who possesses the authority to govern the Church in the present crisis? By addressing Leo XIV as “Pope” even while warning of schism, the SSPX creates a theological absurdity—simultaneously recognizing a manifest heretic as the Vicar of Christ while claiming to resist his heresies.
The Fatal Contradiction of Recognizing Heretics as Popes
The sedevacantist position, grounded in perennial Catholic teaching, is clear: a manifest heretic cannot be Pope or a member of the Church. As St. Robert Bellarmine taught in *De Romano Pontifice*: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The SSPX’s entire structure depends on maintaining the fiction that John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Leo XIV are true Popes who have merely erred in governance or discipline.
This is theologically impossible. The errors of the conciliar “popes” are not disciplinary abuses but formal heresies against defined doctrine. When “Pope” Leo XIV speaks of “dialogue,” “tolerance,” and “communion” with heretics and schismatics, he directly contradicts the perennial teaching that there is no salvation outside the Church and that false religions are not to be publicly honored or promoted. As Pope Pius IX declared in the *Syllabus of Errors*: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” is a condemned proposition (No. 80).
The SSPX’s letter to Leo XIV is therefore an act of formal cooperation with heresy—addressing a manifest heretic as if he possessed spiritual authority, thereby lending legitimacy to his office and deceiving the faithful about the true nature of the crisis.
The Planned Consecrations: Schism Within Schism
The article notes that the SSPX plans episcopal consecrations on July 1 without papal approval. The Vatican has warned this would be a “schismatic act” resulting in automatic excommunication. Yet the SSPX proceeds, convinced of their own righteousness.
Here we must ask: What authority do these bishops claim? If Leo XIV is truly Pope, then their consecrations are indeed schismatic—they would be setting up an independent hierarchy in rebellion against the Vicar of Christ. If Leo XIV is not Pope (as sedevacantists maintain), then the SSPX’s entire previous acknowledgment of him was sinful, and their consecrations still lack jurisdiction because they have never been in communion with the true Church.
The SSPX exists in a theological no-man’s-land: too Catholic to be Protestant, too schismatic to be truly Catholic. Their bishops, ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre (himself consecrated by the Freemason Liénart), possess questionable validity at best. As the file on sedevacantism notes: “Archbishop Lefebvre continuously acknowledged the validity of the usurpers in the Vatican; his words: ‘give us the old Mass, that is enough for us’; ordained by the freemason Liénart; questionable ordinations render them invalid in the Church.”
The Rejection of Vatican II: Incomplete and Self-Defeating
The SSPX’s declaration supposedly rejects “certain teachings and reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly regarding religious freedom and the Church’s approach to other faiths.” This selective rejection is itself a modernist error. One cannot accept the authority of a council while rejecting its solemn declarations. Either Vatican II was a legitimate ecumenical council guided by the Holy Ghost, or it was a heretical assembly of apostates. There is no middle ground.
Pope St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*, condemned the proposition that “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (No. 57) and that “The progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine” (No. 64). Yet the entire SSPX project is built on the premise that pre-conciliar doctrine needs “updating” in its application while remaining theoretically intact—precisely the modernist hermeneutic condemned by the Church.
The SSPX’s 154 statements are a trap: they list truths while omitting the most fundamental truth of all—that the conciliar authorities are not Catholic, not Popes, not bishops, but antichristian usurpers occupying the physical structures of the Church while establishing the abomination of desolation in the holy place.
The Traditional Latin Mass: A Valid Liturgy in an Invalid Church
The SSPX’s fidelity to the Traditional Latin Mass is commendable in itself, but rendered spiritually dangerous by their false ecclesiology. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the unbloody renewal of Calvary, as defined by the Council of Trent. But the question of who validly offers this sacrifice and with what intention is paramount.
If the SSPX acknowledges Leo XIV as Pope, then their Masses are offered in communion with a manifest heretic—a communion that contaminates the sacrifice. If they do not acknowledge him, then their previous decades of acknowledgment were scandalous. Either way, their liturgical practice is severed from the true Church’s visible unity, making them merely another Protestant sect with valid matter and form but without jurisdiction or mission.
As Pope Pius XI taught: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The SSPX, by negotiating with the conciliar structures and seeking regularization from manifest heretics, denies this freedom and submits the Church to the judgment of the world.
The Only Solution: Return to the True Church
The crisis of the Church will not be resolved by 154 carefully worded statements or by episcopal consecrations performed by questionably valid bishops in communion with manifest heretics. The only solution is the return to the true Church—the Church that existed before 1958, the Church that teaches without compromise, the Church that recognizes no authority but Christ’s.
This true Church endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who reject the entire conciliar revolution, and who await the restoration of the papacy by divine intervention—not through negotiations with antichristian authorities. As the file on Fatima notes (applicable here by analogy): “The message focuses on external threats (communism), omitting the main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church since the beginning of the 20th century.”
The SSPX’s declaration is a distraction from the real battle. While they issue letters to cardinals, the true Church suffers in obscurity, awaiting bishops who do not seek regularization from heretics but who govern in the name of Christ alone, recognizing no earthly authority that contradicts His divine law.
The consecrations of July 1 will not produce true bishops for the Church. They will produce additional leaders of a schismatic community, further removed from the true Church’s visible unity. The faithful must pray for the true Church’s deliverance—not through human negotiations, but through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, the conversion of Russia to the true Catholic faith, and the restoration of all things in Christ the King.
As Pope Pius XI concluded *Quas Primas*: “Then at last, so many wounds can be healed, then there will be hope that the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again, swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him, and every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”
This will not come through the SSPX’s compromised witness. It will come through the triumph of the true Church, purified and restored, acknowledging no king but Christ and no authority but His eternal law.
Source:
SSPX Issues Declaration of Faith to Pope Leo XIV and Cardinals Ahead of Consistory (ncregister.com)
Date: 24.06.2026