Salza and Siscoe Defend Gay Blessings, Call SSPX Masses Sacrilege

In a Gaspers interview, they say Society priests commit mortal sin, old SSPX confessions and marriages were invalid, Francis rescued souls, Lefebvre implied defection, and Strickland teaches heresy.

There are interviews that clarify a dispute by accident. The guests think they are defending the Church. Instead, they expose the strange moral architecture of their own position.

That is what happened in Matt Gaspers’ recent Veritatis Vox interview with John Salza and Robert Siscoe. The topic was ecclesiology: the nature of the Church, her visibility, her unity, her jurisdiction, her indefectibility, and the errors of sedevacantism. On paper, it was supposed to be a master class in Catholic doctrine.

In practice, it became something much more revealing.

Because by the end of the interview, the listener is left with a rather extraordinary picture. The Society of St. Pius X is outside the Church as an organization. Its chapels were illicitly founded. Its traditional Masses may “look good,” but they are sacrilegious. Its priests commit mortal sin whenever they offer illicit Masses. Sedevacantist confessions are totally invalid. SSPX confessions and marriages were invalid for forty years. Francis, by granting faculties, performed a “tremendous grace.” Archbishop Lefebvre effectively taught that the Church defected. Bishop Schneider holds errors. Bishop Strickland is teaching heresy and, according to Siscoe, deserved removal.

And Fiducia Supplicans? The document authorizing blessings for same-sex couples?

That, we are told, actually restricts the ways homosexual persons could previously receive blessings.

There it is. Fire and brimstone for the priests preserving the old Mass. Careful distinctions, generous readings, and pastoral nuance for the document that gave the world “gay blessings.”

This is their ecclesiology in action.

The Mass That “Looks Good” But Is Sacrilege

The most explosive moment in the interview comes when Salza and Siscoe discuss illicit traditional Masses. They are not content to call them irregular, unauthorized, or that the SSPX lacks ordinary canonical status.

They go much further.

They say that illicit Masses in sedevacantist chapels and SSPX chapels may “look good,” but are “sacrilegious.” They say the priest is guilty of mortal sin “every time” he offers such a Mass. They even describe traditional clergy who celebrate illicit sacraments without mission or jurisdiction as men who have “stolen” and now “traffic in the goods of Christ.”

Pause there.

This is the Roman Mass. The Mass of Gregory, Pius V, the martyrs, the missionaries, the saints, the old catechisms, the old missals, the old altars, the old faith. The Mass that formed Archbishop Lefebvre. The Mass that the postconciliar regime tried to quarantine, restrict, domesticate, and finally suffocate through Traditionis Custodes. The Mass that kept families Catholic while diocesan parishes became laboratories of liturgical improvisation.

Salza and Siscoe look at that Mass, offered by priests who have preserved the traditional faith while diocesan structures collapsed around them, and say: sacrilege.

Not merely danger. Not merely canonical disorder. Sacrilege.

This is the tell. In their system, the old Mass can become a mortal sin problem because the canonical paperwork is wrong. But the new religion, so long as it flows through official channels, must be treated with endless patience. Bad liturgies? Irrelevant to the substance of the Church. Non-definitive novelties? Not binding. Synodal chaos? Mostly talk. Fiducia Supplicans? Restrictive if you read it charitably.

The traditional priest gets the manualist hammer.

The postconciliar revolutionary gets a footnote.

Francis the Rescuer of Traditional Souls

The interview becomes even more surreal when the discussion turns to SSPX confessions and marriages.

Gaspers raises Francis’ decision to grant SSPX priests faculties for confession and the later provisions involving marriages. Salza and Siscoe respond by saying that Francis gave the Society what was necessary because, in their view, SSPX confessions and marriages had been invalid for decades. They state that “all these marriages were invalid” and “all these confessions were invalid for 40 years,” adding that invalid absolutions and invalid marriages are “not saving souls.” Then comes the remarkable line: Francis’ intervention was a “tremendous grace.”

Francis, then, becomes the merciful rescuer of traditional Catholics from the sacramental invalidity created by their own resistance.

Francis. The man of Amoris Laetitia. The man of Abu Dhabi. The man under whom Pachamama was venerated in the Vatican orbit. The man who gave the Church Traditionis Custodes. The man who approved Fiducia Supplicans. The man whose pontificate was practically a traveling exhibit in doctrinal ambiguity.

That Francis is presented as the one who stepped in to save souls from SSPX sacramental catastrophe.

Now, to be clear, Francis did extend faculties for SSPX confessions. In Misericordia et Misera, he stated that faithful attending churches served by priests of the Society of St. Pius X could validly and licitly receive sacramental absolution, and he extended that faculty beyond the Jubilee Year.

But Salza and Siscoe draw out the implication in the most damning possible way for traditionalists: if Francis had to grant the faculty, then the Society had supposedly been giving invalid absolutions for forty years. That is the argument.

And the result is almost comic in its inversion. The faithful who fled clown Masses, catechetical collapse, Eucharistic irreverence, moral compromise, and doctrinal fog are told that their traditional priests were not saving souls. The man whose reign turbocharged the crisis becomes, in this telling, the generous provider of validity.

This is where their position ceases to sound like ecclesiology and begins to sound like Stockholm syndrome.

“Every Other Case Is Not Fine”

Siscoe does not stop with confession. He suggests that SSPX confessions are “presumably valid” only until the Society consecrates its next round of bishops, at which point “that’s going to come to an end.” He says SSPX priests can validly witness marriages only if they receive authority from the local bishop, and can offer a licit Mass only if the same bishop grants authority. “In those cases everything’s fine,” he says. “Every other case is not fine.”

Notice the practical consequence.

A Society priest may preach the old faith, offer the old Mass, hear confessions from Catholics trying to save their souls, form families in the traditional sacramental life, and hand down the catechism that diocesan structures abandoned. But unless the local postconciliar bishop approves, the whole thing is treated as a sacramental minefield.

Meanwhile, the local diocesan bishop may tolerate liturgical abuse, Eucharistic irreverence, rainbow ministries, limp catechesis, sacramental minimalism, indifferentism, and moral mush, yet he remains the gateway through which traditional sacramental life must pass in order to be considered safe.

This is the deeper scandal. Salza and Siscoe are not merely making an argument about jurisdiction. They are making the postconciliar hierarchy the practical judge of whether Tradition may breathe.

The SSPX Is “Not Part” of the Church

The next step is organizational. Siscoe states that the Society of St. Pius X “as an organization” is not part of the Roman Catholic Church and has not been since May 6, 1975. He says the Society never had authority to set up chapels and that every Society chapel was established illicitly, with perhaps one exception.

Again, the reader should grasp the scale of the claim.

The Society did not merely make prudential mistakes. It is not merely canonically irregular. It is not merely operating in a state of emergency whose limits and legal implications are debated. No, on this telling, its chapels, its apostolate, its sacramental life, and its institutional existence have been fundamentally outside the Church’s authorized mission for half a century.

This is why the rhetoric becomes so severe. Once you accept their premise, the SSPX is not a lifeboat. It is a pirate ship. Its priests are men trafficking in stolen sacred goods. Its Masses are not acts of preservation. They are sacrileges.

And yet, somehow, the postconciliar diocesan structure that produced the emergency remains the unquestioned reference point of Catholic normalcy.

Gay Blessings Get the Soft Glove

Now compare all of that with the treatment of Fiducia Supplicans.

When Gaspers brings up the document and describes it as giving permission for informal spontaneous blessings to same-sex couples, Siscoe asks whether it was ever forbidden for a priest to bless two homosexual persons. He says that, as he reads Fiducia Supplicans, it is actually restrictive. It permits blessings only under certain conditions. It does not bless the union. If read in that light, he says, one comes to a different understanding of it.

This is the conservative postconciliar machine in miniature.

When traditional priests offer the Mass of the Roman Rite without diocesan authorization, every canonical severity is activated. Sacrilege. Mortal sin. Theft. Invalidity. Schismatic structures. Not saving souls.

When Rome authorizes blessings for same-sex couples, suddenly we are asked to slow down, read carefully, avoid headlines, distinguish persons from unions, remember the conditions, and appreciate the restrictive elements.

But the actual Vatican text says what it says. Fiducia Supplicans states that “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples” can be understood without officially validating their status or changing Church teaching on marriage. It also says the document offers an “innovative contribution” involving a “broadening and enrichment” of the classical understanding of blessings.

That word “couples” is not accidental. The document is not merely about blessing two isolated individuals who happen to be standing near one another. It contemplates couples in irregular situations and couples of the same sex approaching for a blessing as couples. It then insists, through the usual machinery of postconciliar ambiguity, that nothing doctrinal has changed.

Everyone understood the signal. Progressives celebrated. The world reported it as a major change. Conservatives rushed in afterward with magnifying glasses and anesthesia.

Salza and Siscoe’s treatment of the document fits the pattern perfectly. Tradition is read with maximum suspicion. Francis is read with maximum charity.

The “Non-Definitive” Escape Hatch

The deeper engine of the interview is the claim that non-definitive teachings and bad liturgies do not touch the substance of the Church. Early in the discussion, they compare the present crisis to the Passion of Christ. Christ’s divine nature was hidden beneath His disfigured humanity. Likewise, they say, the Church’s divine nature is hidden behind her disfigured human element. Salza then says that non-definitive teaching and bad liturgies are irrelevant to the substance of the faith and the Church.

This is how the postconciliar revolution gets absolved.

Nothing ever quite counts. Vatican II? Pastoral. The Novus Ordo? Bad liturgy perhaps, but not substance. Assisi? Imprudence. Abu Dhabi? Ambiguous. Amoris Laetitia? Non-definitive. Fiducia Supplicans? Restrictive. Synodality? Ancient in principle. Ecumenism? Misunderstood. Religious liberty? Nuanced. Collegiality? Traditional. The new catechetical culture? Accidental. The new moral atmosphere? Not ex cathedra.

The revolution advances through practice, language, permission, silence, appointments, gestures, commissions, liturgy, and pastoral normalization. Conservative apologists then arrive to explain why none of these individually satisfies the exact theological conditions for formal defection.

It is like watching a house burn down while a man with a clipboard explains that no single flame has consumed the entire structure.

Lefebvre Becomes the Villain

Then comes Archbishop Lefebvre.

Salza says Lefebvre held that the Catholic Church had become the conciliar church and that the conciliar church was no longer Catholic. From there, he concludes that Lefebvre believed the Church defected, either by ceasing to exist or by morphing into something else. He also says that Society priests hold the same basic position, even if they state it in different ways.

Later, Salza argues that when Lefebvre said the conciliar church is no longer Catholic, what he really meant was that the Roman Catholic Church itself is no longer Catholic, since there are not two churches, one conciliar and one Catholic. He also claims that Lefebvre attributed the four marks to the Society.

This is a classic move. Lefebvre’s diagnosis of a conciliar church is treated as though it were a denial of Catholic indefectibility rather than an attempt to name the parasitic novelty occupying Catholic structures.

But Lefebvre was not inventing an invisible Protestant church. He was trying to describe a real phenomenon that millions of Catholics could see with their own eyes. The postconciliar religion spoke differently, prayed differently, taught differently, disciplined differently, evangelized differently, and worshiped differently. It retained Catholic structures while promoting a new orientation. It used Catholic authority to impose post-Catholic habits.

You can debate Lefebvre’s exact formulations. You can criticize his canonical decisions. You can argue about supplied jurisdiction, necessity, emergency, or episcopal consecrations. But pretending he simply denied indefectibility is too easy. It allows his critics to avoid the question he forced onto the table.

What do you call it when the visible authorities of the Church appear to promote the very revolution previous authorities condemned?

Salza and Siscoe’s answer is: you call it the Catholic Church, because otherwise the Church defected.

Lefebvre’s answer was more dangerous because it was more honest: you call it the conciliar church.

Schneider Has “Errors,” Strickland Teaches “Heresy”

Bishop Schneider does not escape either.

When Gaspers mentions Schneider’s generally sympathetic view of the Society’s work, Salza responds that they have issued videos on Schneider and believe he holds many errors. He connects Schneider’s sympathy for the SSPX to the Society’s alleged non-Catholic formation and later raises the question of whether Schneider supports the Society’s “schismatic marriage tribunal.”

But the sharper attack is reserved for Bishop Strickland.

Siscoe says Strickland is teaching “the heresy” that the Mystical Body of Christ is a spiritual entity of those united to the heart of Jesus, distinct from the institutional juridical Church. Salza then says Pius XII and Leo XIII condemn Strickland’s error. Siscoe suggests Strickland was probably removed because he promoted a sedevacantist heretic casting doubt on Francis’ legitimacy. Then comes the line: “I would have removed him too if I was the pope.”

Again, notice where the severity falls.

Strickland, one of the few bishops who publicly gave voice to what ordinary Catholics were seeing under Francis, is accused of teaching heresy. Schneider, one of the few bishops willing to speak sympathetically about traditional Catholics, has errors. Lefebvre, who preserved the traditional priesthood and Mass through the worst period of postconciliar collapse, is made into a man whose logic implies defection.

The postconciliar system itself gets every benefit of the doubt.

The men who resisted it get the indictment.

“Sacramental Bishops” and the Emergency They Refuse to See

The interview also attacks the SSPX rationale for consecrating bishops. Salza calls the idea of “sacramental bishops” a “total perversion of the episcopate,” an “utter and complete novelty,” and “absurd.” Bishops, he insists, are consecrated and sent primarily to govern, not merely to provide sacramental life.

There is a real theological issue here. The episcopate is not merely a sacramental vending machine. Bishops are not consecrated simply as confirmation and ordination technicians. The governing office matters.

But once again, the argument is abstracted from the crisis that produced the SSPX in the first place. Archbishop Lefebvre did not wake up one morning and decide that ordinary ecclesiastical structure was boring. He acted because the traditional priesthood, traditional Mass, and traditional sacramental life were being strangled by the men who possessed the official structures.

That is the emergency Salza and Siscoe never really face. They can describe jurisdiction beautifully. They can quote manuals. They can distinguish ordinary and supplied authority. They can explain the visible unity of the Church. But when the visible authorities use that unity to suppress Tradition and normalize revolution, their answer is still: submit, wait, interpret charitably, and do not set up unauthorized structures.

That may sound tidy in a classroom.

It sounds very different to a father trying to keep his children Catholic in a diocese where Tradition is treated as a disease and moral ambiguity as pastoral creativity.

The Real Thesis: Tradition Must Justify Itself, Revolution Does Not

The whole interview reveals one governing instinct.

Tradition must justify itself.

The revolution does not.

The SSPX must justify every chapel, every Mass, every confession, every marriage, every bishop, every act of resistance. Sedevacantists must account for every jurisdictional implication, every episcopal claim, every chapel, every sacrament, every theological formulation. Strickland must answer for a phrase. Schneider must answer for sympathy. Lefebvre must answer for the conciliar church distinction.

But postconciliar Rome? It merely has to remain institutionally continuous.

Its liturgy may collapse. Its seminaries may rot. Its bishops may persecute the old Mass. Its dicasteries may bless same-sex couples. Its synods may platform revolutionary moral questions. Its documents may be celebrated by every enemy of Catholic tradition on earth. Its leaders may speak in riddles, gestures, ambiguities, and pastoral exceptions. Still, as long as the machinery remains visible, Salza and Siscoe insist that this is the Church, and the Catholic duty is to recognize it as such.

This is why their argument is so powerful to some and so intolerable to others. It relieves Catholics of the burden of drawing the terrifying conclusion. It says: yes, the crisis is bad, but the institution remains the institution, therefore the visible Church remains easy to identify.

But what if the crisis is precisely that the institution has been used to impose a new religion while retaining Catholic names?

What if the paperwork is part of the disguise?

The Inversion Is Complete

In the old Catholic instinct, one would expect tenderness toward priests trying to preserve the Mass and severity toward documents that scandalize the faithful by blessing objectively disordered unions.

Here we get the reverse.

The old Mass offered without authorization is sacrilege. The priest is in mortal sin. The clergy are trafficking in sacred goods. The faithful received invalid absolutions for forty years. Francis rescued them. Lefebvre implied defection. Schneider has errors. Strickland teaches heresy and should have been removed.

But Fiducia Supplicans? Read it carefully. It is restrictive. It does not bless the union. The doctrinal part is fine. The problem is mostly prudence.

That is the whole postconciliar conservative tragedy in one interview.

They have become ferocious where Tradition is irregular and delicate where revolution is official.

And that is why the title writes itself.

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