Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the Vatican’s aggressive excommunication of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) after they consecrated bishops without papal approval. They discuss why the Church is cracking down on the Latin Mass, traditional Catholics, and the fastest-growing, highest-fertility segment of the faith — while selling off convents and schools.

Topics include: the capture of the Vatican, Vatican II reforms and contradictions, the Latin Mass vs. Novus Ordo, demographic collapse in mainstream Catholicism, monetary incentives for decline, parallels with the Anglican realignment/GAFCON schism, and why institutional recapture through demographics may be nearly impossible.

Show Notes

AP News on July 2nd:

“VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican responded aggressively Thursday to a traditionalist group that consecrated bishops without the pope’s consent, declaring the Society of St. Pius X had formally broken with the Catholic Church. It excommunicated its bishops and priests, and warned its faithful that they too face the harshest sanctions in the church.

By declaring a schism and extending excommunications to potentially thousands of Catholics, the Vatican’s doctrine office went above and beyond the minimum sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law to respond to the consecrations Wednesday of four new bishops.

The society, known by its acronym SSPX, celebrates the ancient Latin Mass and opposes the modernizing reforms of the Catholic Church, which it considers to be rife with heresies and errors. While a fringe movement on the Catholic right, the SSPX has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for five decades because it claims to be even more Catholic than the Holy See.

During a ritual-filled, five-hour Mass on Wednesday at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops in direct defiance of Leo, who had urged the group to hold off for the sake of church unity. An estimated 15,500 people and their children attended, a sign that the SSPX has plenty of supporters who came from around the world knowing full well they were defying Rome.”

The Excommunication

In Catholic teaching, excommunication does not equal being condemned to hell, nor is it understood as a declaration that a person is damned (Official theology has long insisted that only God judges the soul definitively; excommunication addresses external communion, not the internal state of grace.)

* The current law treats it as a “censure,” not expulsion from the Church; an excommunicated person remains a baptized Catholic, still bound by obligations like Sunday Mass, but barred from receiving or administering sacraments and holding church offices

* Its purpose is medicinal: a severe wake‑up call meant to prompt repentance and return to full communion, not a spiritual “execution.”

* Most excommunications can be lifted by going to confession and receiving absolution from the appropriate authority (sometimes any priest, sometimes a bishop, sometimes the Holy See, depending on the offense).

* Also, what is your take on the Vatican’s excommunication SSPX members? https://www.facebook.com/reel/776390925518377

* https://www.disclose.tv/id/8klgxp4icx/

* The decree promulgated in response was by far the harshest one yet

* Leo hasn’t walked back traditiones custodes either

* The clergy in Charlotte just appealed to Rome

* The bishop took away the thriving Latin masses, restricting it to one small chapel in a corner of the diocese that can’t hold everyone

* Banned altar rails

* I think you are mistaken that high fertility means anything in the immediate term

* I used to live on a block that had a public school that was a former Catholic parish school

* The diocese sold it due to low enrollment

* Selling off properties as they are shuttered makes money

* I think a lot of religious leaders feel their job is quietly managing decline and not making too much fuss

About SSPX - Society of St. Pius X

Origins of SSPX

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) originated in 1970 in Switzerland as a priestly fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to preserve traditional Catholic priestly formation and liturgy in the wake of Vatican II.

Ecclesial approval and early status

* The local bishop of Fribourg, François Charrière, approved SSPX in 1970 as a “pious union of priests in the diocese,” initially on an experimental basis.

* This early approval meant SSPX initially existed within the canonical structures of the Church, not as a breakaway group.

* Rome initially sent visitors who gave favorable reviews of the seminary’s formation, underscoring that early tensions were not immediate.

Rapid growth

* As of 2025, SSPX reports about 1,482 members total (bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers).

* Of these, around 733 priests (excluding bishops) belong to the Society.

* Estimates place 600,000 or so faithful attending SSPX Masses worldwide.

* Internally, SSPX news sites emphasize that the Society “has experienced constant growth” since 1970, with new locations opening every year.

* In the United States, SSPX lists 20 priories and 103 chapels, plus retreat centers, which is “quite small” compared with hundreds of non‑SSPX parishes offering the TLM.

Commentators sometimes point out that, by priestly headcount, SSPX would rank among the larger priestly religious congregations if fully recognized: one claim placed them around 5th after Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and Augustinians, based on ~700 priests. That’s meant to highlight how unusual it is for a group of that size to remain canonically irregular.

The Birth Rates

There is strong evidence that Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) Catholics as a whole have higher fertility than other Catholics, but there is no hard, SSPX‑specific dataset that cleanly isolates “SSPX parishioners” from other TLM communities.

The best quantitative data are for TLM vs. Novus Ordo Catholics, not SSPX vs. non‑SSPX:

* A widely cited U.S. survey of Latin Mass attendees reported an average of 3.6 children per woman among TLM Catholics versus 2.3 among Catholics attending the ordinary (Novus Ordo) form.

* Commentators describe this as “nearly 60% larger family size” for TLM participants relative to ordinary‑form parishioners.

* Social‑science work on religiosity and fertility generally finds that more devout, frequently attending religious adherents have higher fertility and intended fertility than nominal believers, which fits these numbers.

Points of Divergence from the Vatican

1. Episcopal consecrations without papal mandate

* SSPX consecrated bishops without the required papal approval, most notably Marcel Lefebvre’s consecrations in 1988 and the new consecrations in 2026.

* The Vatican has repeatedly declared these consecrations a “schismatic act,” stressing that choosing bishops without a papal bull crosses a definitive canonical boundary.

* The latest decree explicitly states that this act created a formal schism and triggered automatic excommunication of the bishops involved.

2. Rejection of key aspects of Vatican II

* SSPX was founded explicitly “in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council,” and continues to reject major elements of those reforms.

* They object to the Council’s promotion of the role of laypeople, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, seeing these as harmful concessions rather than legitimate developments.

* The group has accused the post‑conciliar Church of being “rife with heresies and errors” such as modernism and liberalism, positioning itself as the sole guardian of the “true faith.”

3. Liturgy and the Roman Rite