# A silver lining to the SSPX situation

**By:** Luke Collins  
**Published:** 2026-08-07T13:00:00.000Z  
**Source:** [The Catholic Herald](https://thecatholicherald.com/article/a-silver-lining-to-the-sspx-situation)

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A lot has already been said about the second round of Écône consecrations, especially in the online Catholic sphere, mostly predictable stuff. Some have been championing the SSPX as heroic resisters, standing firm while Rome collapses into confusion, while others have been treating the event as a welcome opportunity to denounce not only the SSPX, but more or less anyone with an attachment to the older liturgy.
Let’s be clear: episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate cannot be waved away as a piece of traditionalist drama. However grave the crisis in the Church may be, consecrating bishops against the explicit will of the Pope is not on. The unfortunate situation with the SSPX, however, may yet have one silver lining: bishops may finally realise that the best way to keep Catholics attached to the old rite in full communion with Rome is to make the old rite more available, not less.
Frankly, this is just pastoral common sense. If someone discovers the traditional Mass and finds that his own diocese treats it as something suspect, he will eventually begin to look elsewhere. If the traditional liturgy is treated as contraband within the ordinary structures of the Church, one should not be surprised when people seek it outside those structures.
How do we keep Catholics who love tradition safely within the life of the Church? More Traditional Latin Masses. More stable provision. More generous pastoral care.
There are already signs that some bishops understand this. Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo, responding to the SSPX crisis, did not merely warn Catholics away from schism; he also reassured those attached to the traditional Mass that, if there is need, he would expand celebration according to the 1962 Missal in his diocese.
That is exactly the right instinct. He is saying to his people: “You do not need to go elsewhere, and you do not need to choose between obedience and the liturgy which has nourished your faith. The Church has room for you here.”
This was, in broad outline, the instinct of Pope St John Paul II after Archbishop Lefebvre’s original consecrations in 1988. Ecclesia Dei spoke plainly about disobedience to the Roman Pontiff, and called for respect towards Catholics attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, and for a “wide and generous” application of permission for the 1962 Missal. Pope St John Paul II understood something important. Condemnation is sometimes necessary, but it is not enough. A father does not merely warn his children away from danger; he gives them somewhere safe to go.
Of course, one should be fair to the SSPX position. They would say, quite rightly, that their dispute with Rome is not only about the liturgy. It is about doctrine, Vatican II, religious liberty, ecumenism, the social kingship of Christ, and the extent to which the Church has or has not spoken clearly since the Council. One need not accept the SSPX’s conclusions to admit that Rome has not always helped itself here. There have been decades of ambiguity, uneven discipline, strange gestures, and a general sense that clarity is often demanded most fiercely from those attached to tradition while being treated as optional elsewhere.
But none of that justifies schism. Since Traditionis Custodes, many traditional Catholics have received the message that their attachment to the old rite is, at best, a tolerated eccentricity, and at worst, a symptom of disloyalty. Some communities have been left alone. Others have been restricted, moved, or suppressed. Often the whole thing feels dependent not on a settled place in the Church’s life, but on the mood of whoever happens to be in authority at the time.
It would be naïve to pretend that no bishop will use the SSPX consecrations as an excuse to crush the traditional Mass even further. There are some whose actions in recent years can only reasonably be attributed to a deep disdain for the older liturgy and for the people attached to it. For them, Traditionis Custodes was not a painful disciplinary measure but a welcome weapon, and the SSPX situation will be treated as further proof that every Latin Mass community is merely a schism waiting to happen.
That would be a disastrous lesson to draw.
There are, of course, problems in some traditionalist circles. There are people who speak of the Pope more like a hostile politician than the Vicar of Christ. All of that needs correcting. But correction is not the same thing as suspicion, and pastoral care is not the same thing as bureaucratic containment. A father does not cure a son’s bad temper by making him feel unwanted in the family.
This is where the position of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter becomes so awkward. The FSSP exists because priests and seminarians refused to follow Archbishop Lefebvre into the 1988 consecrations. They chose Rome. They chose obedience. They chose to preserve the older liturgy in full communion with the Holy See.
Nearly 40 years later, they still have no bishop of their own. That is not a healthy long-term settlement. If Rome wants traditional Catholics to reject the logic of Écône, it must show that obedience is not rewarded with dependence, insecurity, and slow suffocation. This does not necessarily mean creating an FSSP bishop tomorrow. There may be other ways of giving traditional communities more secure provision, but the question should at least be taken seriously. A community which is priestly, liturgical, missionary, and international cannot indefinitely be told that its only future is to depend on the goodwill of bishops who may or may not want it there.
At the diocesan level, the matter is much simpler. If there are Catholics in a diocese who are attached to the old rite, the bishop should want them in his churches, under his authority, in communion with Rome. He should not want them driving two hours to an SSPX chapel because the nearest lawful traditional Mass has been restricted out of existence. He should not want young families concluding that the only people who seem to want them are irregular traditionalists. He should not want the old liturgy to become, by neglect or hostility, the perceived property of those outside canonical regularity.
The old rite is not a magic solution to the Church’s problems. It does not automatically produce saints. It does not guarantee orthodoxy, charity, or obedience. But it is a place where many Catholics have found reverence, beauty, seriousness and doctrinal clarity which they simply couldn’t find elsewhere. Those things are not threats to the Church. They are among the things the Church exists to hand on.
And despite everything, I am hopeful. I do not believe that most bishops hate tradition, and nor do I believe that most of them want to drive faithful Catholics towards irregular chapels. I think many of them, confronted with the seriousness of this situation, will see what ought to be obvious: the safest place for Catholics attached to the traditional Mass is not outside the diocesan Church, but securely within it.
So if there is a silver lining to this miserable situation, it is this: perhaps more bishops will now make lawful provision for the old rite, not less. More stable communities, not fewer. More generous pastoral care, not more suspicion. If bishops want fewer Catholics going to the SSPX, they should provide more Traditional Latin Masses.
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