Rebel sect ignores Pope's warnings

PARIS - A conservative Catholic sect that is demanding a return to the traditional Latin Mass has thrown down a challenge to Pope Benedict XVI by inducting 11 priests, defying Vatican warnings that the ceremonies are illegal.

Eight priests and 10 deacons were ordained yesterday by the leader of the Society of St Pius X, Monsignor Bernard Fellay, at the group's headquarters at Econe in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

Just two days earlier, three priests took holy orders in the Pontiff's home region of Bavaria near the town of Regensburg.

Nearly 4000 people turned out for the twin ceremonies, snubbing the Holy See's warning on June 17 that the men would have no right to practise their ministry as the ordinations were "illegitimate" under canonical law.

The ordinations pose a weighty dilemma for the Pope, a conservative who was previously responsible for overseeing Catholic doctrine and is sympathetic to the traditionalists.

He has gambled a large chunk of his credibility on trying to heal a 39-year-old schism with the group.

The Society of St Pius X (SSPX) was founded by a rebel French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre.

He broke away from the Church in the 1970s in protest at the axing of the Tridentine Mass under the liberal reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council.

In 1988, Pope John Paul II excommunicated Lefebvre and four bishops he had ordained into the sect.

Lefebvre died in 1991 and is buried at Econe.

Eager for reconciliation, on January 24 Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Lefebvre's four bishops, a move that unleashed a storm when it transpired that one of the four, Richard Williamson, a Briton, had publicly denied the Holocaust.

Compared to the estimated one billion Catholics around the world, SSPX has only a tiny following.

It claims to have 150,000 faithful in more than 60 countries.

But, it says, people are flocking to its traditionalist message and the youth of its 510 priests - their average age is 40 - testifies to its spiritual allure.

France provides the mainstay of SSPX's support, accounting for 135 priests and 30,000 worshippers attending 196 churches.

Many of them are administered by "flying" priests who on Sundays drive from one Mass to the next.

It has 36 schools in France, teaching 3000 children, as well as the Saint Pius X University Institute in Paris' Latin Quarter, which teaches philosophy and classical literature.

Nearby, the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church becomes so packed that it now stages five Masses on Sunday, attended by some 4000 people.

Of the eight priests who were ordained yesterday at Econe, seven hailed from France and nine of the 10 deacons were French.

Conservatism and tradition are the sect's watchwords, and many of its followers are bourgeois or upper-class families, says Henri Tincq, a specialist on religion who has just published a book about the SSPX, Catholicism - the Return of the Fundamentalists.

The focus on Latin is underpinned by a belief that the Church must not lose its connection to the original tongue of its preaching, thus avoiding any errors of translation.

But there is also hostility to dialogue with other religions, another legacy of the 1960s reforms.

The SSPX says it does not wish to break away from Rome but simply to nurture "the incalculable treasure of Catholic tradition within the one true Catholic Church".

It says the mainstream Church is haemorrhaging, both in terms of followers and in the number of newly ordained priests to replace clerics who die or retire.

France this year is expected to ordain only around 90 mainstream priests, while Germany's ordinations last year were less than 100, "a record low", it says on its website.

After the slap given to the Vatican by the ordination ceremonies, the question is whether the Pope will decide to push ahead with an offer to pursue theological dialogue with the renegades.

If so, the process will collide with inflated expectations on both sides, says Tincq.

The SSPX, after its decades in the wilderness, believes it now has a supporter who will turn the clock back and reassert traditionalist doctrines.

The Pope, meanwhile, believes his gestures of conciliation will coax the rebels back into the fold so that they accept the Second Vatican Council and the other changes of the past 44 years.

Says Tincq: "It's a double illusion."