Is Lefebvrist Eucharist valid?

by Michael Shackleton · Published February 5, 2012 · Updated October 9, 2017

What is the Church’s official position on the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), and are the sacraments (in particular the holy Eucharist) of the SSPX valid? John E Cunha

Pope Benedict declared: Until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers, even though they have been freed from ecclesiastical penalty, do not legitmatately exercise any ministry in the Church.

Officially, the Church accepts that the founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was a validly ordained bishop. Because of this, the priests and the bishops that he ordained possess valid orders. They can celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist validly.

Archbishop Lefebvre founded the SSPX in 1970 in an attempt to preserve the traditional values of the Church which, he believed, had been abandoned by Vatican II (1962-65).

After a number of years it became clear that he and his followers had not completely adopted the documents of Vatican II. In defiance of warnings from Rome not to ordain his own traditionalist seminarians as priests, he went ahead and did so in 1976.

He went further. Without papal mandate and in disobedience to Pope John Paul’s orders, he ordained four of his priests as bishops in 1988. The Church considered this as a schismatic act which, in the words of canon 751 of the Code of Canon Law, is the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him.

In effect, the disobedience to the pope’s explicit instructions was a snub for the head of the college of bishops, which led as a consequence to the SSPX’s exclusion from the unity of that college.

The Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops then declared that Archbishop Lefebvre and the men he had ordained had canonically incurred automatic excommunication (c1382). Dialogue between the Vatican and SSPX continued and in 2005 Bishop Bernard Fellay, Archbishop Lefebvre’s successor, requested a meeting with Pope Benedict. Other meetings with the Vatican followed, but the difficulties SSPX had with Rome were apparently not resolved.

In 2009 the Vatican lifted the automatic excommunication imposed on the SSPX bishops. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict declared: Until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers, even though they have been freed from ecclesiastical penalty, do not legimatately exercise any ministry in the Church.

Catholics who may now and again attend Masses and received holy communion celebrated by SSPX priests are not in breach of canon law. However, their attendance does not express their full communion with the Catholic Church because the SSPX does not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Catholic Church.