Society of Saint Pius X

Bishop Vitus Huonder celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (Low Mass) at Society of Saint Pius X's Sancta Maria Institute in Wangs, Switzerland.

Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is the largest radical traditionalist Catholic organization in the world, who rejected the Roman Catholic Church's reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), alleging that they deviated from the Catholic Church's traditions.

Background

The SSPX was founded by late French archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre in Ecône, Switzerland in 1970 to resist the liberalized Roman Catholic Church.[1][2] Marcel-François Lefebvre was a supporter of the Nazi puppet state Vichy France,[1] who said that the liberation of France was the "victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Petain."[1] The SSPX rejected mediation attempts from the Vatican over their theological disagreements and got excommunicated. Since then, the SSPX has been the biggest Catholic publisher of Holocaust-denying materials,[1][2] with Canada being one of the countries that has banned SSPX publications.[1][2]

Membership

In 2016, it is estimated by scholars that the SSPX has 103 chapels, 25 schools and up to 30,000 followers.[3] E. Michael Jones, one of its loyal members, were also found to have promoted Nazism to his students.[3] As of October 2024, the SSPX has 700 priests worldwide, 180 of whom were based in France operating 250 placed of worship.[4]

Prominent members

Richard Williamson

Photo of SSPX bishop Richard Williamson.

Richard Williamson (born March 8, 1940 in Buckinghamshire, England) is an SSPX bishop who denied the Holocaust in public for several times. Since 1989, Richard Williamson has persistently denied the existence of gas chambers in the Auschwitz concentration camp,[3][5] claimed that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was true and insisted that fewer than 300,000 Jews had died in the Holocaust[5] on a Swedish TV interview,[6] which caused him to be fined €10,000 in Germany for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred.[5][6]

Despite his longstanding antisemitism and Holocaust denial, the Roman Catholic Church reinstated him as a bishop, sparking controversy over the influence of radical traditionalist Catholics within the Church hierarchy.[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
    • "12 Anti-Semitic Radical Traditionalist Catholic Groups". Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). January 16, 2007. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
    • "Radical Traditional Catholicism". Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2024. For "radical traditionalist" Catholics, antisemitism is an inextricable part of their theology. They subscribe to an ideology that is rejected by the Vatican and some 70 million mainstream American Catholics.
    • "Traditionalist Catholicism". Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Retrieved December 29, 2024. Traditionalist Catholics [...] continued to incorporate explicit antisemitism into their theology [...] a paranoid belief in Jewish conspiracies to undermine the church and Western civilization [...] preach that contemporary Jews are responsible for deicide, endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and claimed that there was a factual basis for the medieval blood libel. One of its bishops, Richard Williamson, is a well known Holocaust denier.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Radical Powerhouse". Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 2015. Retrieved December 29, 2024. The Society of St. Pius X, which has chapels and schools across the United States, remains a font of anti-Semitic propaganda.
  4. ↑ Lasserre, Matthieu (October 10, 2024). "36 years after the schism, what does the Society of Saint Pius X represent?". La Croix International. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Meikle, James (April 16, 2010). "German court fines British bishop for Holocaust denial". The Guardian. Retrieved December 29, 2024.