The Society’s Silence: What Happened to the Prophetic Voice of the SSPX?

How the SSPX Lost Its Voice When the Church Needed It Most

For many years, the Society of St. Pius X was a voice crying out in the wilderness. When the Church seemed to abandon her own traditions and embrace the modern world with open arms, it was the SSPX that stood up, refused to conform, and denounced the errors with apostolic clarity. They warned of a “new religion,” identified the dangers of ecumenism, and fearlessly called modernist Rome to conversion. Whether one agreed or disagreed with their canonical standing, few could deny the moral courage they displayed when nearly every other traditional voice had been silenced or absorbed.

But something changed.

Under the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the SSPX was vocal, aggressive, and spiritually militant. Under Francis, and now Leo XIV, that voice has been muted. It is not merely a matter of tone but of mission. The SSPX of the 1990s and early 2000s was on fire. The SSPX of 2025 feels like it's been professionally managed, polished, and de-fanged.

What happened to the Society that once stood in opposition to the errors of the age, regardless of the consequences?

The Boldness of the Old SSPX: Public Rebukes, Fiery Sermons, and Clear Teaching

One of the clearest examples of the old SSPX spirit was the historic occupation of the Church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris in 1977. Led by the fearless Mgr. François Ducaud-Bourget, traditional Catholics physically reclaimed the church for the Latin Mass, refusing to yield even under police pressure and media condemnation. That act of defiance wasn’t just symbolic, it was a lived expression of the SSPX’s willingness to stand firm in the face of institutional apostasy. It was a moment that inspired thousands and marked a real line in the sand. Where are priests like that today?

During the reign of John Paul II, the SSPX did not mince words. Their critiques were unambiguous. The 1986 Assisi prayer meeting was denounced as a public scandal: a “blasphemous pantheon of religions.” Archbishop Lefebvre and his successors saw it as a betrayal of the First Commandment and of the missionary mandate of the Church. The SSPX’s publications, such as The Angelus and Fideliter, routinely ran scathing theological critiques of the pontificate, analyzing conciliar texts, dissecting speeches, and comparing them to the perennial magisterium.

In 2005, when Benedict XVI took the throne, many hoped for a shift back toward Tradition. And in some ways, Benedict did soften the treatment of traditionalists, most notably through Summorum Pontificum. But the SSPX remained clear: Benedict was still a Vatican II pope. He upheld ecumenism, religious liberty, and collegiality: the very errors the Society had been founded to resist.

The Society issued respectful but firm critiques of his writings, including Deus Caritas Est, and raised alarms over the continuity Benedict tried to establish between the Council and Tradition. At no point did they imply that the crisis was over. Nor did they ever hint that reconciliation should come at the price of silence. Their sermons reflected this urgency: preaching was often direct, theologically rigorous, and unflinching in naming the crisis and its causes.

Their theological criticisms were reinforced by real ecclesial action. They continued to form priests, ordain bishops, and expand chapels while issuing public warnings about modernist Rome. In short, the SSPX had a mission and they fulfilled it openly, even defiantly.

The Turning Point: Rome’s Outreach, Internal Purges, and the PR Pivot

After 2009, things began to change.

Rome opened the door to doctrinal discussions with the SSPX. Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the four bishops. On the surface, this seemed like progress. But the cost of these talks became clear soon after. Once rumors of a possible agreement began to circulate in 2011–2012, internal divisions surfaced. Bishop Williamson was expelled. Priests known for their hardline positions began to vanish from public view.

A purge occurred.

Those who had spent years boldly denouncing the crisis in the Church, especially in sermons and publications, were replaced with calmer voices, more cautious men, men willing to “dialogue.” Sermons shifted. No longer did the Society’s priests call out the Pope by name for heretical statements. No longer did they explain how ecumenical actions contradicted Mortalium Animos or Quanta Cura. Now the sermons became “spiritual meditations,” perhaps personally edifying, but studiously apolitical and avoidant of crisis.

The Society’s messaging began to shift. The tone became polished, corporate, sanitized. The passion was gone.

The SSPX that once raged against the modernist Vatican was now issuing press releases “welcoming” gestures from the Holy See; even when those gestures came from Francis, whose record of doctrinal and liturgical abuse far exceeded that of his predecessors.

The Francis Years: From Prophets to Diplomats

With Francis, the crisis reached new heights. Pachamama. Abu Dhabi. The Amazon Synod. The Synod on Synodality. The persecution of the Latin Mass. The canonizations of John Paul II and Paul VI. Communion for the divorced and remarried. The papal silence on blessing same-sex couples in Germany. The public praise of Luther. The declaration that “diversity of religions is willed by God.”

What did the SSPX say?

Very little.

When they spoke at all, their tone was cautious, deferential, and oddly bureaucratic. Their critiques were not even remotely as forceful as their old responses to Benedict and John Paul II. Some examples:

• When Traditionis Custodes was released, the Society called it “a matter of concern,” but emphasized their own immunity and invited displaced faithful to attend SSPX chapels. No condemnation. No outcry. No “blasphemy” or “betrayal” like in the days of Assisi.

• When Francis signed the Abu Dhabi declaration, they issued a measured statement of theological “clarification,” avoiding any direct accusation of heresy or doctrinal rupture.

• When Pachamama was enthroned in the Vatican Gardens, the SSPX responded late and limply, with a generic critique of syncretism in general, not even naming Francis or the event in its headline.

Even in the rare instances where the SSPX has responded, such as its published analysis of Fiducia Supplicans, the Vatican declaration permitting blessings for same-sex couples, the tone was cautious, clinical, and oddly dispassionate. Issued through FSSPX.News rather than from any district superior or bishop, the statement expressed concern over doctrinal confusion but avoided directly confronting the Pope’s personal approval or calling for resistance. Gone was the prophetic indignation once directed at lesser scandals; in its place stood a subdued essay that read more like an academic memo than a cry of alarm.

What once would have triggered a spiritual call to arms now elicited only a press release with footnotes.

And now, under Leo XIV, this pattern continues.

The Fullerton Letter: Polished Deference in the Age of Apostasy

Perhaps no document better illustrates the SSPX’s new tone than the May 21, 2025 letter issued by Fr. John Fullerton, the District Superior of the SSPX in the United States, addressing the election of Leo XIV. What should have been an opportunity to express grave concern, or at the very least, to issue a sober, theologically grounded warning, was instead a carefully constructed exercise in institutional diplomacy. In fact, the letter could have been mistaken for something issued by the FSSP or Opus Dei.

From the opening paragraph, the letter is drenched in procedural reverence and restrained commentary. Cardinal Prevost’s election is called a “momentous occasion,” and the faithful are encouraged to scrutinize the future with hopeful eyes, by examining not the doctrinal fruits of the new pontificate, but by comparing his gestures to those of his “predecessor.” Which predecessor? Even here, there is no mention of Francis at all, only a reference to Pope Leo XIII from over a century ago. As if the path to understanding Leo XIV’s pontificate lies in the 19th century rather than in the revolution of the last twelve years.

What follows is a striking absence of clarity. Instead of naming Leo XIV’s well-known track record—his praise for the Abu Dhabi declaration, his fidelity to the synodal revolution, his enthusiastic appointment of female dicastery heads, the letter warns the faithful not to be “overly influenced” by the online world or by “experts” scrutinizing the Pope’s words. In other words, don’t trust your own eyes. Don’t read what’s on the page. Don’t weigh his public record. Instead, just pray. Hope. Assume the best. Be quiet.

This rhetorical evasion is not merely disappointing, it is pastoral negligence. In decades past, the SSPX formed consciences by equipping them to judge modernism through the lens of Catholic Tradition. Now, it is instructing the faithful to suspend judgment, sideline their concerns, and defer to an undefined and nebulous “spirit of charity.”

The most glaring omission is any reference, explicit or implicit, to the doctrinal crisis the Church now faces under Leo XIV. This is the same man who canonized Francis with a tweet, praised the spirit of Nostra Aetate, and doubled down on the ecumenical and environmental trajectories of the past twelve years. And yet, not a single word of caution is issued. Not a hint of doctrinal discernment is proposed. Instead, Fullerton concludes with a sentimental invocation that Leo XIV might “fill the shoes of St. Peter,” as if the pontificate of Francis had never happened.

The letter says the Church has been “beset by a crisis that has lasted for nearly six decades,” yet offers no indication that the new pontificate continues or intensifies that crisis. On the contrary, it seems to suggest the opposite: that Leo XIV might be the man to reverse it. There is no recognition that Leo’s stated agenda is a continuation of Francis’s revolution, nor that his first public acts were celebrations of synodality, interreligious harmony, and a renewed “ecological conversion.” The reader is left with a vague impression that things are uncertain, but hopeful, and the job of the laity is not to analyze, not to speak, not to resist, but to pray and hold the pope “in your hearts.”

To be clear, prayer for the pope is right and good. It has always been part of the traditional liturgy, and no faithful Catholic would deny its necessity. But to use prayer as a substitute for truth, or worse, as a way to quiet legitimate alarm, is not spiritual leadership. It is public relations.

This is not how the SSPX once spoke. In the 1980s and 1990s, their press statements named names. They laid out the errors of Dignitatis Humanae, Unitatis Redintegratio, and Nostra Aetate with surgical precision. They did not tell the faithful to withhold judgment until more time passed, they warned that modernist theology had infected the Church at the highest levels, and that to remain silent in the face of such error was itself a betrayal of the faith.

Fr. Fullerton’s letter is not a betrayal in that sense, but it is a warning signal. It reveals an SSPX that now seeks to manage its public profile, rather than proclaim the truth without compromise. It reveals a Society increasingly cautious about how it is perceived by Rome and the public. It reveals a churchman more concerned with sounding “charitable” than being prophetic.

This is what happens when prophecy is replaced with diplomacy. When a society of priests founded to resist the revolution instead prays politely for the revolutionary-in-chief without a word of warning, the faithful are left without shepherds who speak plainly. The priests may still offer the Mass. They may still teach the catechism. But their silence on the great crisis of the day, when it counts most, will echo louder than any sermon.

The SSPX Faithful Deserve the Truth

None of this is to say the SSPX is invalid or useless. They provide the sacraments. They educate children. They form priests. For thousands of families, they are the last refuge from a Church that often feels hostile to its own patrimony.

And that is precisely the tragedy.

Because the faithful deserve more than silence. They deserve truth.

When those entrusted with preaching and shepherding choose diplomacy over doctrine, when they pull their punches for fear of losing favors, then they are no longer fulfilling their apostolic mission. They are managing a brand.

This doesn’t mean the SSPX is wicked. It means they are at a crossroads. Their silence may be strategic. It may be fearful. It may be the fruit of some unspoken understanding with Rome.

Whatever it is, it is not the voice of Archbishop Lefebvre. And it is not the SSPX many of us once knew.