A traditionalist Catholic organization with a major presence in Dillwyn is facing renewed penalties from the Vatican after consecrating bishops without papal approval. WMRA’s Anjoleigh Schindler reports.
Set across broad fields in rural Buckingham County, St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary is a sprawling brick complex overlooking wooded hills and religious monuments.
The campus opened in Dillwyn in 2016, after the Society of Saint Pius X outgrew its former American seminary — a school where men study and train to become Catholic priests — in Minnesota.
It is now the largest seminary operated by the worldwide traditionalist Catholic organization, commonly known as SSPX. The society reports more than 700 priests, 264 seminarians and ministries in dozens of countries.
Its conflict with the Vatican — the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church — stretches back more than half a century.
JOHN FARINA: Second Vatican Council … between 1962 and 1965 … but it was a monumental moment in the history of the Church. … Modernity was not seen as an enemy. The Church had come to the point where it had to deal with it and felt that it could by redefining its position in the modern world.
John Farina is an associate professor of religious studies at George Mason University.
FARINA: It’s not only a new style. It’s not a difference between one style of music and another, or some minor difference of taste. But it’s a difference in doctrine… But really, it is a movement that rejects the whole thrust of the Second Vatican Council.
In response to the Council, SSPX was founded in 1970 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
As a result of Vatican II, Mass increasingly moved from Latin into local languages. Priests often celebrated Mass facing the congregation instead of the altar, more of the Bible was read during services, and ordinary church members took a more active role in worship.
Lefebvre argued that the council had departed from longstanding Catholic teaching, particularly by embracing religious freedom and greater dialogue with other churches and religions.
He named the society after Pope Pius X, remembered for opposing theological modernism.
FARINA: There is a line going back to the earliest followers of Jesus, the apostles. So the lived experience of those that have come before us is being handed on faithfully by this one line that can trace literally back to Peter. To say that you don’t believe – you’re not going to submit to the pope — which is what schism means today — you’re saying “no, I have my own version of what is the Christian truth.”
Catholics believe bishops continue the leadership of Jesus’ apostles and that the pope inherits the authority of Saint Peter. That is why bishops are normally appointed with papal approval.
The Catholic Church withdrew its official recognition of SSPX in 1975, but the group continued training priests and operating chapels and schools.
FARINA: But no, they want to ordain bishops because they think that the Church is in error.
In 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four bishops against the orders of Pope John Paul II.
The Vatican said the consecrations amounted to a break from the pope’s authority and declared those involved automatically excommunicated — the church’s most serious penalty, which bars someone from fully participating in the church until they are reconciled.
The society said the consecrations were necessary for its survival and rejected the Vatican’s claim that its bishops had been validly excommunicated.
Over the following decades, relations partially thawed.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the four surviving bishops at their request, although SSPX still lacked official recognition.
Pope Francis later allowed SSPX priests to validly hear confessions and pronounce forgiveness for sins, and created a process through which they could validly witness Catholic marriages.
But the underlying doctrinal conflict remained unresolved.
A new break from the Vatican
By 2024, deaths and expulsions had left SSPX with only two affiliated bishops.
In February of this year, the society announced that it would consecrate four more.
Vatican officials offered renewed talks but warned that consecrating bishops without the pope’s approval would constitute schism — a formal break from the authority of the Catholic Church.
Pope Leo XIV personally urged the society to stop. It proceeded anyway.
On July 1, SSPX Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta consecrated four new bishops, assisted by Bishop Bernard Fellay.
Among the four were Michael Goldade, rector, or head, of the Dillwyn seminary, and Marc Hanappier, a professor there.
FARINA: It’s a very fundamental break. [The year] ‘88 was when they first consecrated bishops, and then they got excommunicated. The subsequent popes gave them some grace and more room, liturgically and canonically. And now they went and did it again.
The Vatican formally declared the following day that the four new bishops and the two bishops who consecrated them had incurred automatic excommunication.
The decree also warned SSPX clergy and followers not to support or join the group’s break from the authority of the Catholic Church.
Excommunication does not erase a person’s baptism or mean that person stops being Catholic. But it bars the individual from receiving or administering most sacraments until reconciliation occurs.
The consequences extend beyond the six bishops.
In a July 8 letter to priests across the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Bishop Barry Knestout wrote that the situation was especially relevant because the SSPX seminary sits within the diocese.
He said confessions heard by SSPX priests and marriages witnessed by them must now be considered invalid under church law.
He also said he would no longer delegate SSPX priests to witness marriages within the diocese.
But Knestout emphasized that ordinary laypeople are not automatically excommunicated simply because they attended an SSPX Mass.
That includes people who did not understand the society’s status or who attended without rejecting the authority of the pope or the teachings of the Church.
Knestout urged diocesan priests to treat SSPX followers with compassion and to help those who want to return to full communion with the Catholic Church.
The Dillwyn seminary declined WMRA’s request for an interview. The seminary said Bishop Goldade is not accepting interviews outside SSPX’s own media outlets. The Catholic Diocese of Richmond also declined to comment.
SSPX says on its website it is neither schismatic nor truly disobedient.
Its leaders argue that they recognize the pope but cannot follow directives they believe would compromise Catholic tradition or leave the society unable to continue ordaining priests.
On July 11, SSPX submitted a preliminary request asking the Vatican’s doctrinal office to reconsider the decree against the six bishops.
The society says that filing temporarily suspends enforcement of the decree while the request is considered.
But the appeal’s prospects are unclear.
SSPX has no recognized legal status as an organization within Catholic canon law, and the society has not released the full text of its appeal.
Even if the appeal proceeds, it appears to challenge the penalties declared against the six bishops — not necessarily the Vatican’s broader conclusions about the society or the withdrawal of its authority over confessions and marriages.
Farina questions what the society expects to accomplish by repeating the same act that produced excommunications in 1988.
FARINA: How can they be so unrealistic as to think that there’s going to be a future for this?
Farina says the rupture is serious, but reconciliation remains possible.
FARINA: There is a path back, because, basically, they just did the same thing again. … Absolutely, if they repent and the pope extends an olive branch, which he probably will.
That has happened before.
The Vatican eventually lifted the penalties arising from the 1988 consecrations and spent years trying to reconcile with the society.
Whether that happens again depends on the conflict neither side has resolved: SSPX says it must resist Church authorities to preserve Catholic tradition. The Vatican says the tradition cannot be preserved by rejecting the authority at its center.
