Rome - On 26 May 2026, during the Octave of Pentecost, the General House of the Priestly Society of St Pius X issued an official communiqué, signed by the Superior General, Fr Davide Pagliarani, announcing the names of the four priests who are to receive episcopal consecration on 1 July at Écône. It is a step of unprecedented gravity, all the more so in the light of the repeated warnings from the Holy See, and one destined to reopen forcefully the question of relations between the Society and Rome. On the very same day, the portal Kath.net published a substantial and wide-ranging interview with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, devoted entirely to the situation of the Society of St Pius X and to the serious dogmatic, canonical and liturgical questions it raises.
The announcement by the Society of St Pius X
In the communiqué issued from Menzingen, Fr Pagliarani announces that the four priests chosen for the episcopate are:
Fr Pascal Schreiber, Swiss, aged 53, rector since 2020 of the Herz Jesu seminary in Zaitzkofen, Germany;
Fr Michael Goldade, American, aged 45, rector since 2023 of the Saint Thomas Aquinas seminary in Virginia;
Fr Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, French, aged 42, superior since 2022 of the Benelux district;
Fr Marc Hanappier, French, born in 1990, professor of metaphysics and dogmatic theology at the seminary in Dillwyn, Virginia.
The communiqué stresses that, “in a spirit of respect for the supreme authority of the universal Church”, the priests’ files were presented to the Holy Father, accompanied by certain explanations deemed necessary for a proper understanding of an initiative said to belong to a “very particular and exceptional context”. Yet the Holy See has received this gesture as yet another “challenge and act of disrespect” which “the Society is carrying out, unfortunately, with the endorsement of many self-styled traditionalists”, a prelate of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith tells Silere non possum.
The Superior General reiterates that the choice and consecration of the new bishops do not proceed “from any desire to claim a power of jurisdiction or to establish a parallel authority in the Church” and do not constitute “a denial, rejection or challenge to the supreme, full and immediate power of jurisdiction of the Vicar of Christ over the universal Church”. These are declarations of formal respect which, however, clash openly with the substance of the facts: the Society is in effect allowing itself to dictate to the Pope which path he should follow and which “errors” he should correct. It is a claim which, if made by Anglicans or by any other confession, would provoke indignation and uproar in those same traditionalist circles, but which suddenly becomes legitimate when they are the ones making it.
The Society then states that the ceremony of 1 July would have no purpose other than to “ensure continuity in the administration of the sacraments of Holy Orders and Confirmation, as well as of the sacramentals reserved to bishops, according to the traditional rite of the holy Roman Church and the faith of all time”. It is a claim that does not withstand scrutiny: if the Society had truly wished to guarantee such continuity, it could have asked Rome to appoint bishops, rather than choosing and consecrating them itself. In this regard, the words addressed by Leo XIV a few days ago to movements and associations come to mind: “And therefore the Bishop is a very important point of reference, and if a group says: ‘No, we are not in communion with that Bishop, we want another one’, that is not right. We must try to live in communion with the whole Church, at diocesan level as well as at universal level.”
The episcopate of the four priests is thus presented as “a service rendered to souls and to the Church in the midst of this unprecedented crisis of faith”, in the awareness of the duty to transmit faithfully “what the Church has always believed, taught and practised”. Beyond the rhetoric, this is in reality an act of unprecedented gravity and with openly schismatic features. The initiative to proceed with new episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate in fact revives the same doctrinal and canonical tensions which, in 1988, led to the excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — an excommunication later lifted by Benedict XVI in January 2009, in an attempt to open a path towards agreement with the Society, a path which, in practice, it has always refused.
Cardinal Müller’s interview with Kath.net
It is in this context that the interview published today by Kath.net, conducted by Lothar C. Rilinger with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, is situated. The Cardinal addresses with great clarity the full range of issues at stake: the doctrine of religious freedom contained in Dignitatis humanae, the meaning of conciliar ecumenism, the dogmatic and canonical consequences for a priest who does not fully represent the doctrine of the Church, the nature of excommunication and the meaning of its revocation, the distinction between the substance of the sacraments and liturgical forms, the relationship between the ancient rite and the renewed rite, the question of new episcopal consecrations, and possible paths towards an agreement, including the hypothesis of a personal prelature.
Cardinal Müller, while recognising the spiritual richness of the ancient liturgy and openly criticising the restrictions imposed on its celebration - describing the disciplinary suppression of the ancient rite as “pastorally very unwise” and “dogmatically untenable” - firmly reiterates that the problem is not liturgical but dogmatic: it concerns the Society’s claim to set itself up as a court of judgement above the Magisterium of the Pope and of the bishops in communion with him. Particularly significant within the interview is the reference precisely to the declaration addressed by the Society to Pope Leo XIV in May 2026, and to the new episcopal consecrations, which the Cardinal considers dogmatically and morally unjustifiable outside a condition of extreme persecution in which contact with Rome were impossible.
Given the relevance of the text and its ability to shed light on what is at stake precisely at the moment when the Society announces its new step, we publish below the full interview which appeared on Kath.net.
Lothar C. Rilinger: Can you describe which decisions of the Council Bishop Lefebvre and the Society of St Pius X reject?
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller: Above all, with regard to the doctrine of religious freedom as a fundamental right before God alone - without state coercion and ideological indoctrination - to follow the truth that becomes clear to the conscience, they see a departure from the Catholic conviction that the Catholic Church alone fully and entirely proclaims and presents for belief the revelation of God in Christ. The members of the Society of St Pius X interpret religious freedom in the sense of nineteenth-century relativistic liberalism, which rejects revelation and turns religion into a question not of truth, but of taste and subjective feeling. Against this, they hold that the Catholic state must promote the Catholic religion as the only true one and deny error any right to exist in the public sphere. In the declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis humanae, however, the Council makes precisely the distinction between religious freedom as a natural human right and the freedom of the person to respond with reason and freedom to the revealed word of God and to recognise in Christ the fullness of the truth of God and of man. In today’s conditions of pluralistic society, and especially in socialist or radically Islamist states hostile to religion, we can be glad if public authority does not interfere in religion and morality. By invoking religious and freedom of conscience, Catholics - including in the unfortunately increasingly anti-Christian EU - can claim their right to reject abortion, euthanasia and the relativisation of marriage between a man and a woman.
To continue speaking here of Catholic states which should, by state measures, socially enforce the still valid dogma of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation seems rather anachronistic.
Likewise, the objections raised by the Society of St Pius X against the ecumenical search for the unity of all Christians in the one Catholic Church, which finds its visible expression in the Pope, miss the statements of the Second Vatican Council. The Council in no way called into question the uniqueness of the Church of Christ, as the declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Dominus Iesus reaffirmed in 2000 under Cardinal Ratzinger. Rather, the point was to acknowledge non-Catholic Christians, who had not personally separated themselves from the Catholic Church but who in good faith adhere to the claim to truth of the confession in which they grew up, and to seek with them ways to rediscover unity in faith, in the sacraments and in the constitution of the Church, as Jesus himself, the founder of the Church, willed it, and which is the visible expression of his unity with the Father (Jn 17).
Rilinger: What dogmatic consequences arise when a Catholic priest is no longer willing to uphold the full teaching of the Church?
Cardinal Müller: Bishops, priests and deacons are inwardly and outwardly obliged, by the sacrament of Holy Orders, to proclaim the faith of the Church in word and to bear witness to it with their lives. If they depart from it substantially and evidently, and do not listen to the admonitions of their superior, canonical penalties may be imposed on them according to the circumstances, up to and including removal from their offices. However, because of the objective efficacy of the sacraments - Baptism, Confirmation and, here, the sacrament of Holy Orders - they do not lose the character imprinted on them at ordination. This is the famous distinction between the illicit but valid conferral of the sacraments.
Already St Augustine had stated, against the Donatists, that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the personal holiness, morality or ecclesial standing of the minister of the sacrament, because Christ is the one who truly acts in the sacraments. The Catholic Church recognises the sacraments in the Orthodox Church because it has validly ordained bishops and priests, although they do not fully and entirely recognise the primacy of the Roman Church and do not live in full ecclesial communion with the successor of St Peter, the Pope.
Rilinger: Pope John Paul II pronounced excommunication against Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–1991) in 1988. This ecclesiastical penalty was later withdrawn. What legal and canonical consequences does excommunication have for a Catholic?
Cardinal Müller: The excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by him was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January 2009, in order to facilitate the reintegration of the Society of St Pius X into the Catholic Church, after conversations had suggested this possibility. However, there was an unexpected polemic against Pope Benedict when it subsequently became known that Bishop Williamson had denied, or at least relativised, the Holocaust. The question of the ecclesiastical penalty and the personal attitude of one of the four protagonists towards the Holocaust, however, have nothing to do with one another in themselves.
Full canonical integration of the Society of St Pius X did not take place because its members held to their imputations against the Second Vatican Council and accused the Church as a whole - on account of post-conciliar developments, but also because of real deviations from the Catholic faith by individual bishops and theologians and abuses in the liturgy - of no longer being fully Catholic in the sense of Tradition, as the Society of St Pius X claims to interpret it as alone valid and, if necessary, even against the Pope. Yet they seem not to notice the contradiction with the Catholic faith: that, in cases of doubt, the Roman Pontiff is the ultimate decisive criterion of Catholicity.
Rilinger: Does the withdrawal of excommunication have the same function as, in state criminal procedure, the annulment of a conviction by a judgment that amounts to full rehabilitation, since the criminal charge is withdrawn in toto? In other words, does the withdrawal of excommunication also mean that the grounds for the excommunication are considered not to have existed?
Cardinal Müller: This cannot be compared with state criminal law. Ecclesiastical penalties must be distinguished from the penalties for sins, which God alone imposes and forgives, above all in the sacrament of Penance, and from the disciplinary penalties of the Church, which are intended to admonish the offender and bring him back onto the right path, the so-called medicinal penalties. Or, in the case of a lifelong prohibition on exercising the priestly ministry, it is not a matter of an expiatory punishment for the act, which is dealt with civilly by the state and ecclesiastically in the sacrament of Penance, but of protecting the faithful from further misconduct by a cleric or ecclesiastical employee who cannot hide behind his ecclesiastical authority.
Rilinger: If the withdrawal of excommunication does not constitute rehabilitation, what does it mean?
Cardinal Müller: As I said, it was the unusual path of mercy taken by Benedict XVI, who hoped that the withdrawal of the excommunication would bring about insight and conversion among the disciplined bishops of the Society of St Pius X, and who did not expect that some would interpret his great act of accommodation as weakness. The Pope, in his office of guaranteeing or restoring the unity of the Church, will always go to the limit of what is possible, while those who have gone astray, in their spiritual pride, take this as an occasion to set conditions. The Pope can make certain concessions where secondary questions are concerned, but not in the substance of the faith, of the sacraments, and with regard to the sacramental constitution of the Church built upon the apostles with Peter at their head, that is, the bishops and the Roman Pontiff. For the sake of unity, the Pope can without difficulty grant the members of the Society of St Pius X the celebration of Holy Mass and the other sacraments in the liturgical form prior to the liturgical reform. For one must distinguish the dogmatic substance of the sacraments from the various rites in which they are celebrated. With great prudence, Benedict distinguished within the Latin rite: the renewed liturgy as the ordinary form and the so-called “Tridentine” celebration according to the 1962 Missal as the extraordinary form within the same Latin rite. Besides the Latin rite, there are of course many other legitimate rites - twenty to twenty-five - within the Catholic Church, above all in the Eastern Catholic Churches.
The liturgy as such is not the problem, but the inaccurate accusation made by the Society of St Pius X that the Catholic Church, with Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis and Leo XIV, has deviated dogmatically from the Catholic faith. In this, they quite absurdly include the Mass in the renewed rite, which in their view contains dogmatic errors, such as the claim that its sacrificial character, while not denied in favour of a mere memorial meal, has at least been obscured.
Rilinger: The accusation of not upholding the full teaching of the Church therefore remains even after the withdrawal of excommunication. Why, then, after Bishop Lefebvre’s consecration of four bishops, did the Church nevertheless not expressly speak of a schism, although the denial of even one part of the teaching is in fact regarded as a separation?
Cardinal Müller: Some spoke of a schism, others did not. Officially, the matter was left in suspense, so as not to consolidate, through harsh formulations, the very situation one wanted to overcome. Schism also requires that those concerned consciously renounce the Catholic Church, her teachings and the criteria of her unity, especially in the Roman Pontiff. The members of the Society of St Pius X have probably not formally stated this so far. Instead, they understand themselves as an emergency community which remains at a distance until the millions of Catholics who have fallen into Modernism, and thousands of bishops and priests and the current Pope, have returned to the Church which the Society of St Pius X has preserved as the holy remnant of the one true Catholic Church.
In a declaration addressed to Pope Leo XIV in May 2026, they demand a turning away from the conciliar and post-conciliar “errors” that contradict “pre-conciliar Tradition”, which they say have crept into the Church despite their admonitions and against which the Magisterium has failed to intervene. The self-understanding they insist upon - that the Catholic Church is the only community in apostolic Tradition which can appeal to Christ’s foundation - has of course never been called into question by the Magisterium. In relation to the demand repeated here, that there may be no religiously neutral state and that the Church must subject the state to Christ and to herself, the members of the Society of St Pius X should perhaps name the states in which they intend to implement this programme.
Of course, for every Catholic the spiritual authority of the Pope, who is the guardian of truth, peace and human dignity, stands above the worldly authorities, which are guided by interests, power and influence. But much is already achieved when states keep out of the question of truth and respect the natural fundamental rights of their citizens, above all their religious and freedom of conscience, and do not - against all common sense - seek, for example, to define marriage as anything other than the life partnership of one man and one woman. All orthodox Catholics are fully entitled to say that the purported blessings of same-sex couples or of couples living in other irregular relationships are objectively sinful, while the pastoral accompaniment of such persons, in the name of the Good Shepherd, is necessary so that they may walk the path of following Christ in accordance with his commandments. But the members of the Society of St Pius X would have to raise this voice within the Church and not against the Church, thereby giving the impression that some right to exist in the Church had been granted to heretical deviations into atheist rainbow ideology. Athanasius and Augustine did not distance themselves from the Church while she had not yet definitively overcome Arianism and Donatism.
Rilinger: Leading representatives of the Society of St Pius X repeatedly state that they understand themselves as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church, although for dogmatic reasons they are unable to accept certain decisions of the Council, while in principle following most of its decisions. Why is the Church unwilling to tolerate the theology of the Society of St Pius X - especially against the background that many believing Catholics find the Society attractive and that its liturgical actions are also recognised by the Church as lawful?
Cardinal Müller: One cannot really be Catholic if one subjects binding statements of the Church’s Magisterium to one’s own subjective standard. The Monophysites claimed to be faithful to the Council of Ephesus (431) and to the teaching of the Church Father Cyril of Alexandria, and then rejected the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which taught the unity of Christ’s divine and human nature in the divine person of the Son in the Trinity. The legitimate difference between theological schools — Thomists, Scotists — and the intellectual originality of individual theologians, such as Romano Guardini or Hans Urs von Balthasar, must not be confused with the necessary unity in the teaching of the apostles and of the Church, as formulated above all at the Councils. The members of the Society of St Pius X would have to explain the difference between their position and Luther’s sentence at the Leipzig Disputation in 1519, which shattered the unity of the Church and undermined her authority, when he said: “Councils too can err!” By this, the ultimately binding authority of the Pope was also called into question, and condemned heretics - rehabilitated as better interpreters of revelation - would be placed above the Magisterium.
The whole hermeneutic of the Catholic faith - already developed by Irenaeus of Lyons against the Gnostics, that is, against the know-alls of every age - would be shattered if, outside the Magisterium of the bishops in communion with the Pope, one had to recognise another human authority which, according to subjective feeling and personal judgement, feels authorised to establish the unity of the most recent Council with the preceding Magisterium.
It cannot be the case, speaking in purely human and theological terms, that at the Council two thousand bishops and all the Popes up to now have erred in dogmatic questions or departed from apostolic Tradition, with the exception of one single bishop who, through illegal episcopal consecrations alone, secures the survival of the Church that Jesus promised to the Apostle Peter, whom he regards as the rock of his Church.
Rilinger: The priests of the Society of St Pius X reject, among other things, the new liturgy established by the Second Vatican Council and insist on celebrating Mass according to the Tridentine rite, which had been in force for almost 500 years before the Council. This rite is greatly appreciated, especially in France, and attracts many Catholics, particularly since Benedict XVI and Leo XIV, unlike Francis, have publicly shown a great affinity with this rite. Could this old rite, or a combination of the old and new rite, open up possibilities for bringing more of the faithful back to church attendance?
Cardinal Müller: The old or new rite is not the problem. On both sides - unfortunately also among the authoritarian agitators in the Roman Dicastery for Divine Worship - the theological difference between the substance of the sacraments and the various liturgical forms is not properly appreciated. A merely disciplinary suppression of the old rite, and the general suspicion cast upon its adherents as deniers of the Second Vatican Council, is not only pastorally questionable but also dogmatically untenable. I myself considered the restriction of the celebration of Mass in the old rite pastorally very unwise, not because I myself am an adherent of the old liturgy, but because, as a Catholic and especially as a theologian, one must also recognise the spiritual wealth of the older rite, and there is no right to raise oneself arrogantly above its friends. Incidentally, the liturgical reform did not create a new rite, but merely somewhat simplified the existing rite, which had also emerged from a growth that was not always homogeneous, so that the faithful could participate more easily inwardly and outwardly, in the vernacular.
Rilinger: The Society of St Pius X is planning new episcopal consecrations in order to ensure that further priests can also be ordained in the future and that the Society’s continued existence can therefore be guaranteed. Why are these consecrations rejected by the Church and regarded as grounds for a schism, even though Bishop Lefebvre’s consecration of the original four bishops was judged unlawful, but not invalid, and not as founding a schism?
Cardinal Müller: No one has a claim to episcopal consecration, which belongs to the Church and not to individual groups, in order to guarantee the survival of his organisation by purely human law. Otherwise the Church would fall apart into interest groups. Even if consecration by a schismatic bishop - even in open contradiction to the Pope - is valid, it still cannot be justified dogmatically and morally by appealing to the salvation of the souls of one’s own clientele. Only in a state of extreme persecution, when contact with the universal Church and with Rome is entirely impossible, would the consecration of a bishop be morally justified in conscience before God and in the unity with the Pope presupposed by faith.
The appropriate solution would be for the Society of St Pius X not to presume to dictate to the Pope the conditions of its full reintegration into the Catholic Church, but, in accordance with the First Vatican Council to which it so gladly appeals, to recognise that one cannot be fully and entirely Catholic without full communion with Pope Leo XIV. And the Pope’s supreme teaching authority does not derive from the sociological truth that in every community someone must have the last word, but from the institution of the Pope as successor of Peter and from the Holy Spirit, who assists him in the exercise of his teaching office and his service to the unity of the Church.
Rilinger: If a schism were to occur, the Church would have to separate herself from many faithful - which would represent a not insignificant loss. Can the Church afford such a loss?
Cardinal Müller: Yes, it would be very sad and a wound inflicted on the body of Christ, which is the Church. But throughout Church history there have also been many separations, especially in the sixteenth century, when the Protestant Reformation led not to a reform of the Church but to a division of Christianity. It is to be hoped that the members of the Society of St Pius X do not revolve around their own circle, but look to the whole of the Church and learn from the mistakes of Church history. They should not take the path of the Donatists, the Jansenists and the Old Catholics. One extreme does not justify the other.
Neither so-called progressivism, which hands over the revealed truth of Christ to the changing currents of the spirit of the age, nor traditionalism, which reduces the whole Tradition of the Church to a few fixed ideas, can be the path of the Church, which the risen Lord has chosen as sacrament, that is, as sign and instrument.
Rilinger: Do you see possibilities for agreement, also in the sense that the self-understanding and particular character of the Society of St Pius X would be preserved? Or can you imagine agreement only if the Society entirely abandons its own path?
Cardinal Müller: It could certainly be recognised as a kind of personal prelature, if, like every Catholic, it recognises the teaching of the Church in its entirety, including the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, as they can be bindingly explained authentically only by the bishops in unity with and under the Pope.
Rilinger: The respective Pope is not only the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but also of other Eastern Catholic Churches, whose constitutions differ from that of the Roman Catholic Church. Would it therefore be possible to grant the Society of St Pius X the same theological and canonical rank as the Eastern Churches?
Cardinal Müller: The constitution by divine law of the one Catholic Church in its various rites is the same everywhere, so that every local Church is led by a validly ordained bishop in apostolic succession and Tradition, but in unity with the whole College of Bishops, which the Pope presides over as the perpetual principle and foundation of the entire Church in revealed truth. Only human ecclesiastical law, that is, concrete forms, differs in the various Eastern Catholic Churches which are grouped into patriarchates, but these are in no way independent of the Magisterium and the Pope’s service of unity. The Society of St Pius X is not a local Church that could claim a special status. It is only a loose association of priests and faithful who understand themselves as a bulwark against the supposed errors which, in their view, are being promoted or tolerated by Rome. It is difficult for the theological reason of the Catholic faith to grasp from where they derive and claim their function of control over the Pope.
Rilinger: Or can you imagine that the reformed Society of St Pius X, even though it deviates from the teaching of the Church in some respects, could nevertheless be regarded as an integral part of the Roman Catholic Church?
Cardinal Müller: According to that, the Catholic Church would be merely a loose association of different doctrinal opinions, as in the Anglican Church, whose unity is grounded only in the will of a secular monarch. The unity of the Church relates above all to faith, together with hope and love, the seven holy sacraments and her sacramental, episcopal constitution. In the teaching presented by the Church there are different degrees of binding force according to their connection with the central contents of revelation, or also with natural truths such as freedom of conscience or the unconditional right to life of every person. The statements of social doctrine do not stand on the same level as faith in the Trinity, the divinity of Christ or the sacraments as means of grace. On the subject of religious freedom, a precise reading of the Vatican decree is required, so that differences in expression from earlier magisterial documents on this matter can be recognised not in content, but in relation to changing addressees.
Whoever wishes to remain in the unity of the Church will profess Christ, the true foundation of her unity, but also Peter, who, together with the apostles and their teaching, is the secondary foundation of her unity and its cohesive summit (vertex), as Thomas Aquinas says in his “Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed” (Article 9). One can hardly accuse the Common Doctor of lacking fidelity to the Catholic faith or suspect him of being a precursor of Modernism when, in the same place, he says with St Augustine that the Church can neither be destroyed by external enemies nor have her truth hollowed out by errors from within. “One can fight against the Church, but one cannot overcome her.”
And therefore it is the case that only the Church of Peter has always stood firm in the faith and remained free from errors. For what Jesus said to Peter, according to Thomas Aquinas, also applies directly to his successor, and that is Pope Leo XIV: “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail” (Lk 22:30).