The Society of St. Pius X

The St. Pius X Society was founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and numbers some six hundred priests and four hundred thousand followers worldwide. The society represents the extreme right wing of Catholics in its refusal to recognize the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicated in 1988 along with four “bishops” without papal permission, stated that the society “has always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which was clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council.”

The society has always harbored a significant number of anti-Semites and is particularly opposed to Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II declaration that absolves the Jews from collective responsibility for Christ’s passion. In 1989, Paul Touvier, an official of the Vichy government who worked under the infamous Claus Barbie, was found hiding in the Society of St. Pius X Priory in Nice. The society claimed that it had allowed him to live there as “an act of charity.” As early as 1946, Touvier had been sentenced to death by the French courts for treason and collaboration with the Nazis. He was later convicted of ordering the murder of Jewish hostages, stealing Jewish property, and ordering deportations of Jews to extermination camps.

The society’s history of anti-Semitism cast a long shadow over Benedict XVI’s desire to heal the rift and incorporate the members of the society into the institutional Church. His lifting of the excommunications of the four “bishops” illegally ordained by Lefebvre without any preconditions set off a storm of protest among Catholics, especially in Germany and Austria and among Jews worldwide. The Pope responded by insisting that Richard Williamson one of the four “bishops” who had denied the existence of gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps fully recant his views. Even if Williamson were prepared to comply, however, that would still leave intact the society’s obdurate refusal to accept the entirety of the Second Vatican Council.

Meet the Expert:  Michael W. Cuneo