Rebel Cath­ol­ics Defy Vat­ican’s Calls To Return To Mainstream Church…Cen­sure Met With Apathy

ÉCÔNE, Switzer­land — When the Vat­ican excom­mu­nic­ated the priest­hood of a rebel con­ser­vat­ive fac­tion last week, cre­at­ing the biggest schism in Roman Cath­oli­cism in dec­ades, it also hoped to drive the group’s many fol­low­ers back to the main­stream church.

Instead, accord­ing to inter­views with some of the fac­tion’s fol­low­ers in Argen­tina, Italy, and Switzer­land, the pun­ish­ment has been met with defi­ance.

“It changes noth­ing,” said Blandine Guil­laumin, 42, a teacher at a school run by the group in France. Guil­laumin said she would remain part of the fac­tion, called the Soci­ety of St. Pius X, even if the Vat­ican went ahead with its threat to excom­mu­nic­ate wor­ship­pers who stayed loyal to the break­away group.

“We are sure we are doing God’s will,” Guil­laumin said. It is the soci­ety, not the Vat­ican, she said, that rep­res­ents “pure, authen­tic Cath­oli­cism.”

Guil­laumin’s defi­ance embod­ied the cli­max of a 56-yearold impasse between the Vat­ican and the soci­ety, foun­ded in 1970 to protest the Roman Cath­olic Church’s mod­ern­iz­ing turn after the Second Vat­ican Coun­cil, which took place between 1962 and 1965.

The soci­ety bemoans the coun­cil’s change to the form of Cath­olic ser­vices. Though the coun­cil allowed priests to hold ser­vices in ver­nacu­lar lan­guages, the soci­ety still cel­eb­rates the Tra­di­tional Latin Mass, arguing it pre­serves a sense of rev­er­ence and mys­tery.

The soci­ety also rejects the sub­stance of the coun­cil’s teach­ings, which it says con­tra­dict the church’s mil­len­nial teach­ing. The soci­ety’s mem­bers oppose the coun­cil’s accept­ance of other reli­gions and its push for inter­faith dia­logue and out­reach to other Chris­tian denom­in­a­tions.

They point to the coun­cil as the begin­ning of the end for the Cath­olic Church, res­ult­ing in fewer people in European pews, fewer priests in pul­pits, and all man­ner of per­ceived her­es­ies and errors. (The num­ber of Cath­ol­ics is, in fact, rising, at least in Amer­ica and Africa.)

Vat­ican lead­ers, includ­ing Pope Leo XIV, nat­ur­ally dis­pute the fac­tion’s pos­i­tion, say­ing that it has broken with key church teach­ings. Leo said last month that its fol­low­ers “refuse to accept cer­tain fun­da­mental ele­ments of the church.”

Andrea Torni­elli, a senior Vat­ican offi­cial who helps run its com­mu­nic­a­tions depart­ment, wrote in an edit­or­ial on Thursday that the group was “very far removed from the Cath­olic faith” because it refused to accept the diversity of Cath­olic teach­ing.

These dis­agree­ments cul­min­ated last week in the tiny Swiss ham­let of Écône, where the soci­ety’s founder, Arch­bishop Mar­cel Lefe­b­vre, over­saw the con­struc­tion of its first sem­in­ary in 1970. In a ritual-laden cere­mony on Wed­nes­day, the soci­ety’s new lead­ers defied Leo by con­sec­rat­ing four bish­ops against his will, an event that the group said attrac­ted some 17,000 people.

A day later, the Vat­ican declared the soci­ety was in schism with the church and issued an excom­mu­nic­a­tion decree against its bish­ops — six in all, after Wed­nes­day’s cere­mony — as well as its priests, bar­ring them from offi­ci­at­ing mar­riages and hear­ing con­fes­sions, which were to be con­sidered invalid.

Other clergy and the lay faith­ful were told that they risked excom­mu­nic­a­tion if they con­tin­ued to fol­low the soci­ety’s teach­ings. The Vat­ican offered an olive branch to those who wanted to leave the soci­ety, issu­ing spe­cific instruc­tions as to how they could return to the Cath­olic fold.

At Écône Fri­day, that entreaty appeared to have been ignored.

The soci­ety has only about 1,500 formal mem­bers, half of whom are priests, but its offi­cials say they can count on between 300,000 and 600,000 lay fol­low­ers world­wide.

The Boston Globe and The New York Times contributed to this report