Traditionalist Catholics face a difficult choice after Vatican cuts off breakaway group

For traditionalist Catholics who worship at churches affiliated with the breakaway Society of St. Pius X, Sunday Mass now comes with an extraordinary question.Their priests and bishops have been excommunicated after the fringe movement on the Catholic right committed what the Vatican considers one of the faith's gravest crimes: rupturing church unity by consecrating bishops without the pope’s consent.

The Vatican says Catholics should stop going to the breakaway group's worship services and activities, and that some sacraments administered by the society's priests are illicit and invalid.Yet inside the society's churches, normal life has largely carried on. Service in the old Latin Mass is still being celebrated, baptisms performed, camps and pilgrimages are moving forward, and some faithful say they have no intention of leaving.

The consecrations two weeks ago posed a crisis for Pope Leo XIV because of his emphasis on church unity. The American pope has especially reached out to the conservative and traditionalist wing of the church, which in many ways were alienated during the Pope Francis pontificate. Fallout from the excommunication remains uncertain Several bishops in the U.

S. are echoing the Holy See’s warning to the society’s faithful, urging them to switch to churches aligned with Rome.“To embrace the unity called for by Christ is to remain attached to the vine and to be in communion with Pope Leo XIV and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church,” San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller wrote to his archdiocese.

His instruction echoes the schism declaration and excommunication decree issued July 2 by the Vatican’s doctrine office against the Society of St. Pius X, also known as SSPX, which has about 750 priests.Will Catholics heed that call?

It largely depends on where worshippers feel most connected, said R. Andrew Chesnut, the Catholic Studies chair at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Longtime SSPX adherents often regard such statements through the lens of a decades-long conflict with Church authorities,” he said, “and are therefore less likely to be persuaded.”

The society was founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which it considers rife with heresies and errors. The 1960s council revolutionized the church’s relations with Jews and other faiths, supported religious liberty for all, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in people's everyday languages, rather than Latin. SSPX leaders see the society as a defiant guardian of church tradition, and they have defended its July 1 consecrations as necessary for saving souls.

The society has also questioned the soundness of the Vatican's sanctions.Chesnut said the response from society leaders was “remarkably consistent” with past flare-ups with Rome. Priests have been reassuring the faithful that there is no change in their mission to preserve traditional Catholic liturgy.

The society has appealed the Vatican decree, and U.S. district spokesperson James Vogel said it's too early to judge its effect.

For now, Masses and other activities haven't stopped. “I think a lot of people just continue to hold fast to what they’ve been doing,” he said. That isn't surprising, said Mike Lewis, managing editor of Where Peter Is, a Catholic commentary website supporting popes Francis and Leo.

“We’re talking about communities that have essentially been separate for 30 to 40 years. People’s families and social lives are wrapped up in this movement,” he said. Some traditionalist faithful choose to double down Jim De Piante's ties to the Society of St.

Pius X run deep. His parents helped bring the movement to North Carolina, and he belongs to St. Anthony of Padua, a society-affiliated church near Charlotte that bought land for a new campus the week after the excommunications.

If anything, the excommunications make him want to do “tradition even harder.” “St. Anthony’s offers to me the traditional sacraments in the same faith that made every great saint throughout history,” De Piante said.

He feels it's his responsibility to preserve that faith for future generations. While he's not worried, De Piante knows others are, especially newer participants, and he has been offering guidance to SSPX faithful in his orbit. He's noticed a small drop in attendance at St.

Anthony's, which draws a few hundred people to Sunday services, and knows families who are rattled and some who don't plan to return. De Piante attended the new bishops' consecrations in Switzerland, and says he remains optimistic about the society's future. The Vatican urges Catholics to come ‘home’ or face consequences When the Society of St.

Pius X consecrated those bishops, the Vatican considered it a schismatic act, a disruption to church unity that resulted in the excommunication of SSPX bishops and priests. The society's faithful were also warned that they, too, would face the church's harshest sanctions if they “formally adhere” to the group.Excommunication is a “medicinal” s