Editors’ Note: The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is an international Catholic priestly society founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to preserve the traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II liturgical and theological traditions. In 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal mandate, an act that triggered a major rupture with the Holy See and remains the defining controversy in the Society’s history. Although the excommunications of the surviving bishops were remitted in 2009, the SSPX continues to exist in an irregular canonical status due to unresolved doctrinal and ecclesiastical disputes with the Catholic Church.
The SSPX has again become the subject of controversy with its planned episcopal consecrations on July 1, 2026. On June 24, 2026, the SSPX published a comprehensive Profession of Catholic Faith, accompanied by an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIV and the College of Cardinals, reaffirming its doctrinal positions while defending its planned episcopal consecrations.
Should these proceed without pontifical mandate, they could expose those directly involved to canonical penalties while further straining relations with Rome and deepening divisions within the traditionalist movement.
In the Philippines, the SSPX has established one of its largest apostolates in Asia, centered on Our Lady of Victories Church in Quezon City, with priories, formation houses, and mission chapels serving the faithful throughout Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Consequently, the Society’s recent Profession of Catholic Faith and the July 2026 episcopal consecrations have attracted considerable attention among Filipino traditional Catholics and the wider Catholic community.
The Society of St. Pius X’s Profession of Catholic Faith is, in many respects, a beautiful reaffirmation of perennial Catholic doctrine. It professes the Trinity, the Incarnation, the necessity of grace, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, Marian dogmas, the Social Kingship of Christ, and many other truths every Catholic should gladly confess.
That is precisely why the document deserves careful scrutiny. The principal difficulty lies not in what it affirms, but in what it implicitly claims about the Church’s living authority.
Throughout the profession, nearly every major theological dispute of the past sixty years is resolved by presenting the Society’s interpretation of Tradition as though it were the definitive measure of Catholic orthodoxy. Vatican II is repeatedly portrayed as the principal source of the Church’s present crisis. Religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, synodality, and the post-conciliar liturgical reform are not merely criticized; they are effectively judged to be departures from the Catholic faith.
The Catholic Church has always distinguished between the Deposit of Faith and its authentic interpretation. The Deposit belongs to Christ. Its authoritative interpretation belongs to the living Magisterium. Catholics, including bishops, theologians, priests, and lay faithful, may respectfully question prudential decisions, identify ambiguities, and request doctrinal clarification. What they cannot do is elevate their own theological conclusions into a parallel rule of faith that judges the Church’s ordinary teaching authority.
Ironically, the document repeatedly professes obedience to the Roman Pontiff while simultaneously rejecting the legitimacy of numerous teachings, reforms, and disciplinary acts approved by successive popes from Paul VI through Leo XIV. It acknowledges that the Pope is the guardian of Tradition, yet reserves to itself the authority to determine when the Pope has failed in that task.
Here lies the central question:
Who ultimately determines what constitutes authentic Catholic Tradition?
If the answer is the living Magisterium, then Catholics owe religious submission of intellect and will to its authentic teaching, even while respectfully seeking clarification regarding difficult or non-definitive matters.
If the answer is the Society’s own interpretation of pre-conciliar teaching, then the living Magisterium becomes subordinate to a private theological judgment. However sincerely intended, that principle resembles the very private judgment Catholicism has historically criticized in Protestantism: an external authority is acknowledged in principle but accepted only insofar as it conforms to one’s own interpretation.
The document also tends to collapse complex theological developments into simple alternatives. Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty becomes liberalism. Ecumenism becomes religious indifferentism. Synodality becomes democracy. The Novus Ordo is described as having largely obscured Catholic doctrine. Such characterizations leave little room for the repeated insistence of successive popes that these developments must be interpreted in continuity with the Church’s prior teaching rather than as a rupture with it.
None of this denies that many Catholics have misused Vatican II to justify doctrinal confusion. They have. Nor does it deny that liturgical abuses, deficient catechesis, and poor pastoral leadership have harmed countless souls. Those failures are real and deserve correction.
But abuses are not the Council.
Nor do flawed implementations demonstrate that every post-conciliar reform is inherently contrary to the Catholic faith.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Society’s document is its very existence. The Church already possesses authoritative professions of faith: the Nicene Creed, the Tridentine Profession of Faith, and the Profession of Faith promulgated after the Second Vatican Council. By issuing a comprehensive new profession that incorporates contested theological judgments as though they belonged to the universal profession of Catholic faith, the Society risks establishing what amounts to a confessional standard of its own.
That is the ecclesiological concern.
The issue is not whether the SSPX teaches many Catholic truths. It plainly does.
The issue is whether a priestly society possesses the authority to define, in opposition to the Church’s present teaching office, which magisterial acts are authentic expressions of Tradition and which are not.
Authentic Catholic Tradition is preserved neither by freezing the Church at 1570, 1910, or 1962, nor by embracing every contemporary development without discernment. It is preserved within the Church Christ founded, where Scripture, Tradition, and the living Magisterium remain inseparably united under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Society rightly reminds Catholics that doctrine cannot change.
It is far less persuasive when it implies that only its own interpretation can determine whether the Church has remained faithful to that doctrine.
The irony is difficult to escape. In seeking to defend the authority of Tradition against modern errors, the Society risks establishing another practical authority alongside the Church’s living Magisterium, one whose final court of appeal is not Rome speaking today, but the Society’s own interpretation of Rome speaking yesterday.
That is a precedent Catholics should approach with great caution.
The header shows SSPX seminarians and priests walking in procession to the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican August 21, 2025 (credit: National Catholic Reporter)
About the author
RAUL F. BORJAL, known as “Rolly” to his family and friends, was born in Naga City, Camarines Sur, and now resides in Parañaque City, Metro Manila. An alumnus of both Ateneo de Naga University and Ateneo de Manila University, he held senior executive roles in several domestic and multinational corporations, culminating in his retirement as Vice President and Corporate Secretary of a Filipino-owned group of companies.
He is married to the former Wenifreda D. Parma, a cum laude graduate of Ateneo de Naga University, and together they have four children. Rolly is also a co-founder and a member of the editorial board of Dateline Ibalon.