Catholic Church leaders are warning followers to stay away from a group of Catholic churches whose leaders were excommunicated from the church this month. One of those churches is in Warners, near Syracuse.
The issue involves a traditionalist group of churches called the Society of St. Pius X. They rejected the changes that came to the church from the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, commonly called Vatican II. The change that drew the most attention involved the end to the requirement that Masses be conducted only in Latin. All of the Society’s member churches offer only the traditional Latin Mass.
The Society also adheres to a pre-Vatican II view of gender roles. Men lead the family and women are expected to manage the home and children. Women should dress modestly and must wear veils in church.
Pope Leo said the Society’s archbishop and its two bishops, whose worldwide membership is variously estimated at anywhere from 100,000 to 600,000 parishioners, excommunicated themselves when they appointed four more bishops in a five-hour ceremony in Switzerland July 1. Bishops can only be appointed by the pope according to the laws of the church, and these appointments were seen by the Vatican as an act of defiance to the pope.
Bernard Fellay, one of the two bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, said in a speech in Virginia before the ordination of the new bishops that the Society had been begging Rome to appoint new bishops as they and their archbishop were elderly and the Society would wither away if they all died or retired without replacements.
“We turned to the [Holy] Father, the one who should give it, and not a word. Nothing,” Fellay said.
The excommunication of the Society’s leaders leaves the Society outside the bounds of the Catholic Church. That includes the Blessed Virgin Mary Priory and Mater Dei Academy, located in a former public school building in Warners, near Camillus.
From July 1 forward, any marriages, baptisms, confirmations, confessions and other functions of the church will no longer be recognized by the Catholic Church. Bishop Douglas Lucia, leader of the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse, said that leaves parishioners of that church and parents of students of the school with a decision.
“For those lay faithful who have chosen to remain with the Society of St. Pius X and have chosen to follow the leaders in, if you want to say, their way of thinking and their approach to this matter, which included disobeying the Holy Father, then they are included in the excommunication,” Lucia said.
Put plainly, parishioners who attend an excommunicated church are themselves excommunicated.
As for the school, which is a K-12 academy with boarding school available beginning with eighth grade, Lucia said he believes students are learning the Catholic faith.
"The only problem is it stops at 1962 (with Vatican II) and the church has had at least 60 years of history, 65 years of history almost, since 1962," he said. "We've had six popes even. It's an incomplete education."
Father Richard Boyle, the pastor in charge of Blessed Virgin Mary Priory and Mater Dei Academy, declined a request for an interview. In a short statement in the church’s bulletin, church members were advised not to let the news "disturb your peace of soul." It said the Society sees the excommunications as invalid and unjust and parishioners should continue as normal.
The Society has lodged an appeal against the excommunications with the Vatican.
Bishop Lucia said parishioners of an excommunicated church can restore their relationship with the Catholic Church by returning to churches in good standing with the Vatican and by accepting the changes made by Vatican II and afterwards.
“What they have to come to is an adherence of faith in those — to those decrees, to those documents,” Lucia said. “As I've explained to folks — this is a common analogy — Dad said, ‘Don't do this or there would be consequences.’ And you did it anyways, and here's the consequences.”
Three Catholic churches in the diocese offer the traditional Latin Mass and are approved by the Vatican — in Oswego, Verona and Binghamton.
