The Vatican has established a new religious institute to accommodate priests and seminarians leaving the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, the I Media news agency report.
The new group, the Good Shepherd community, will be located in Bordeaux. Members will be allowed to celebrate Mass using the traditional liturgy exclusively.
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, signed the decree establishing the Good Shepherd community on September 8. The institute will be a "society of apostolic life," under the supervision of the Congregation for Clergy and the Congregation for Religious.
The Vatican has approved the canonical statutes for the new institute, as well as the first superior: Father Philippe Laguérie, a priest who was dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
Informed sources at the Vatican report that Pope Benedict XVI personally approved the settlement that will allow members of the Good Shepherd society to use the traditional liturgy, following the Missal of St. Pius V. Members of the new institute point out that by authorizing this move, the Pope has fulfilled one of the major demands made by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre before his break with the Vatican in 1988.
The new fraternity will include five priests and a number of seminarians, including several who are in line for ordination to the priesthood shortly. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos will celebrate the group’s first ordinations. All of the members have already left the SSPX.
Father Z has more including some analysis behind this new traditionalist institute.
8 comments
I guess the SSPX talks weren’t going anywhere, so the Vatican set up a half-way house for those SSPX clergy that want communion with Rome. It may stifle ecumenical dialog, just like the Anglicans and the Pastoral Provision.
Awwww, I’m not so pessimistic, to me this seems like a step forward.
I think it’s a step forward myself. Much of the SSPX clergy that want to be in communion I’m sure feel that they don’t want to leave the liturgy they find beautiful. At least they’ll be in communion.
This is the beginning of the end of SSPX. I’ll pray for many of my associates and friends who are sympathetic towards SSPX that they will see the light of their sedeventactist (ok, I can’t spell) ways.
What relationship will the Good Shepherd society have with the FSSP, if any? It seems they have parallel goals.
Exactly, Chris. There are already several orders that use the traditional Mass and are in communion with Rome. Not to be pessimistic, but what’s the point of this new one?
sspx do not give up hope..
let us pray……..
Tito,
Evidently spelling is not your only dificulty. Research seems to be right there with it. The SSPX is not sedevecantist.