‘In our post-Christian era, our culture has grown jaded to the message of the Gospel and feels as if its moment has passed —“we have been there and done that and it did not work”— and thus there is a need to present the figure of Christ once again to the world in a fresh and new light. And this jadedness had extended into the Church herself, as [Joseph] Ratzinger had noted, creating an air of stale indifference and a merely transactional religion of “rules” rather than the evangelical community of believers it was meant to be. For [Hans Urs von] Balthasar, ours is finally the moment when the laity step forward and take their proper role as witnesses in the world to the light of Christ. “The future of the Church,” says Balthasar, “depends on whether laymen can be found who live out of the unbroken power of the Gospel and are willing to shape the world. It is obvious to everyone who sees clearly that the clergy and the Orders can no longer suffice for this.”’
To borrow a phrase from Paul Claudel, the Church must recover its Christological “mystique” to combat the counterfeit mystique of the murderous Moloch, the disordered eroticism of Dionysius, and the unvarnished and out-of-control rage of Ares.
Larry Chapp (On the Germans, the SSPX, and the Theological Convictions of Pope Leo XVI)
‘This is simply not how one does theology. This is instead how one does polemic, and sadly, the book is marred throughout by this kind of superficial rhetoric and analysis. Which means that Bishop Schneider’s primary complaint with [Hans Urs von] Balthasar should not be that he teaches heresy, but that he teaches something on a point of theology with which Bishop Schneider disagrees. Because the Church clearly does allow us to hope for the salvation of all. Indeed, she enjoins us to pray for the same. Why would she ask us to pray for something that is a dangerous and erroneous hope?
Ironically, on this point, it is Bishop Schneider who is in danger of falling into doctrinal error. The Church herself, in her Eucharistic liturgy and in the Liturgy of the Hours, asks us in places to pray for the salvation of all. I do not see anywhere in the rubrics where there is an asterisk next to those prayers indicating that they are in vain and that we should pray them with deep mental reservations and our fingers crossed. What are all of those prayers of intercession for in the Good Friday liturgy where we pray for the conversion everyone? Can we dispense with the tedium of all of that and cut it down to a few prayers indicative of a more provisional and “eschatologically realistic” hope of mass damnation? Why does St. Paul ask us to pray for the salvation of everyone? Was he a closeted crypto-Balthasarian? Why does Our Lady ask us to pray at the end of each decade of the Rosary, “lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy”? Was she just having a bit of cheeky fun with us here? Was she in effect saying, “pray for all that all may go to heaven, but don’t get your hopes up because my Son has already stated that this is false.”’
— Larry Chapp: “Flee From Heresy is flawed, sloppy, and often erroneous”
There is a crisis in the Church today and that cannot be denied. There is widespread dissent from the official magisterial teaching on all manner of topics, ranging from moral theology to ecclesiology to Christology. But far from fighting this lamentable trend, the SSPX is in fact a part of it, as they engage in their own version of theological dissent which entails the assertion that they get to make up their own ecclesial rules as they see fit.
And now here we are in 2026 facing another round of illicit, SSPX episcopal consecrations without a papal mandate. People have asked me for my views. Well, here is my view: should they do this then excommunicate them once and for all and let's be done with them. […] The Church has bent over backwards to accommodate them […] But nothing the Church does is good enough for the SSPX. They are completely wedded to their scorched earth rejection of Nostra Aetate, Dignitatis Humanae, and the Novus Ordo. I support the ongoing efforts by Rome to try and forestall any more illicit episcopal consecrations. But if the talks fail, and they go forward with their schismatic act, then in my view they will have incurred automatic excommunication.
The liturgical scholar Dom Alcuin Reid on the SSPX’s episcopal consecrations
What many do not appreciate is the real pastoral need the SSPX have for new, younger bishops. With over 730 priests, more than 260 seminarians, various religious communities and almost 800 churches or chapels around the world, as well as vast numbers of faithful, which increased substantially during the Covid-induced abdication of ministry by many mainstream parishes, and which increased further after the pastorally disastrous implementation of the 2021 motu proprio Traditiones Custodes, the Society needs more bishops for Confirmations, Ordinations, Professions and other pontifical functions. Its two existing bishops are no longer young enough or sufficient in number to meet these increasing pastoral demands and the constant travel they require.
We would be wrong to view the episcopal consecrations that have been announced as some form of political manoeuvre or an attempt to augment the ceremonial splendour of the Society’s liturgies. The SSPX is rightly convinced that they are necessary for the sacramental life of the Catholic faithful who turn to them. Their bishops work harder than most and are truly missionary, motivated by the salvation of souls – not their own comfort or personal gain.
This is a profound matter of conscience for them, and in truth, it is hard to say that they are wrong when bishops and even popes and cardinals sometimes do all they can to close down apostolates using the traditional liturgical rites for the Mass and the sacraments, and when seminaries and religious houses empty and close one after the other. Demands to submit blindly to obedience such as have been thrown at the Society since the 1970s simply will not cut: the reversal of Pope Benedict XVI’s generous measures by Pope Francis have increased their fears and confirmed their mistrust in authority.
The Society of St. Pius X’s recent announcement that it plans to consecrate new bishops in July, even without papal approval, invites inevit
The Society of St. Pius X’s recent announcement that it plans to consecrate new bishops in July, even without papal approval, invites inevitable comparisons with another group that continues to move against Vatican guidelines: the German Church.
[...]
From a legal standpoint, the contrast is stark. The SSPX exists in a precarious and ambiguous canonical situation, while the German bishops are fully integrated into the Church’s legal and institutional framework. Yet both challenge the Church’s authority in problematic ways. The SSPX challenges official church documents, beginning with Vatican II, while the German bishops largely view themselves as the principal guardians and interpreters of the conciliar legacy. Just as the Germans implicitly claim a mandate to guide the universal Church toward a deeper reception of the Council, the SSPX claims the right to conditionally accept church teaching and law. At this point, the two camps neither meaningfully communicate with each other nor exhibit a healthy relationship with the pope. In both cases, obedience appears strained, selective, or instrumentalized.
Despite vast differences in size and theological orientation, both groups exhibit similar patterns of thought. Like many movements of our time, they appear trapped in what might be called algorithmic echo chambers — internally diverse yet unified by strong ideological boundaries. Chesterton’s image of the “perfect but narrow circle” comes to mind. Both camps have been constructing such circles for decades. Liturgy plays a central role in these conflicts, but it is not the only, or even the most decisive, issue at stake.
[...]
This raises a fundamental question: What, if anything, can disrupt these self‑reinforcing patterns? Is it unreasonable to reconsider canonical interventions, including penalties already outlined in church law, instead of relying on vague, ineffective mechanisms, since the Church must enforce its doctrine and law consistently, not selectively? Alternatively, this may be the moment for robust and honest inclusion — one that exposes both camps to the full ecclesial spectrum, including each other.
“As Christians the centrality of God as the most real and important thing that is, should animate and direct everything we do in life. It should make us different from the world in noticeable ways. But it most often doesn't. And that is the critical point.”
— Larry Chapp: Confession of a Catholic Worker (p. 90)
"...it is more important than ever for Catholics to remember that electoral politics are of penultimate importance, and that when too much hope is placed within it, it can become a distorting idol.
This apotheosis of intramundane politics can rob the Christian of a sense of the truly ultimate, and so we need reminding that no politics can even be truly political in a proper sense unless it is first animated by the leaven of sanctifying grace. But that can only happen when there are Christians who are indeed sanctified. And if there be no such Christians in significant numbers, then the Empire will fill that vacuum with secular sacraments and saints that will act as a simulacrum of the Church in an eschatological register."
— Larry Chapp: "The Universal Call to Holiness as a 'Politics' for Our Time"
"The brute fact is that many modern people in our culture believe that Christianity is profoundly antiquated insofar as they see it as a set of answers to questions that nobody is even asking anymore. Questions like “How can I be saved from my sins?” seem like totemistic holdovers from ancient fears of angry gods that require us to kill a few goats as appeasement. It smacks of a God, or gods, obsessed with moral purity, especially in the sexual sphere, and who demand some blood sacrifice, some pound of innocent flesh, to “set things right.” For many of our contemporaries, therefore, the story of the butchered, murdered Christ, whose death is “needed” by God before He will show us mercy, and which if we do not accept as true will send us into eternal conscious torment, seems like a Judaic iteration of vengeful pagan deities. These are realities therefore, however distorted and caricatured, that are driving the flight from faith.
And the Church herself is viewed within this essentially bestial schema as well. Unfortunately, an overly narrow reading of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church there is no salvation”) turned the Church into a kind of sacramental protection racket where attendance and participation is demanded of you “for your salvation/protection” or else the God of love will send his capo regime thugs to break your legs and send you to hell because you got the “religion test” wrong [...] And given that this is their view of what it is we believe, then even if there really is a hell, they would prefer it to the Godfather’s heaven. They are all latter-day Huck Finns who, thinking helping his friend, the slave Jim, was a damnable offense, exclaimed, “Alright then, I will go to Hell.”
Obviously, I do not agree with such caricatures of the Christian worldview. However, this is precisely how many moderns view us. And more importantly, it is how they view the God we are proposing to them as their putative “savior.” Furthermore, the depth of their rejection can be gauged by their knowledge that in rejecting this imagined God of Christianity, they have left themselves adrift and with very few viable spiritual alternatives. And even as they feel deeply the clawing, grasping, and almost living rapaciousness of the nihilistic abyss below, and even as they stare, steely-eyed, at death, with the deep suspicion that what awaits us is precisely nothing but annihilation and un-existence, they still cannot accept this God of the Christians [...]"
— Larry Chapp: "True Pastoral Accompaniment Requires an Accurate Reading of the Signs of the Times"
