VATICAN CITY (RNS) Representatives of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) met at the Vatican on Monday (Oct. 26) for the first of a planned series of talks aimed at reconciling the breakaway ultra-traditionalist group with the Catholic Church.
No details of the discussions were released, but a Vatican statement said they took place “in a cordial, respectful and constructive climate.”
Founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX is the largest and most vocal group of ultra-traditionalist Catholics who reject the modernizing reforms ushered in by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), including the council’s teachings on religious freedom and subsequent changes to the Mass.
The talks that started Monday will be held over coming months, probably twice a month, according to the Vatican, and will focus on the “doctrinal differences still outstanding” between the SSPX and the Holy See, in areas that include liturgy, “ecumenism, the relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions, and religious freedom.”
The meetings are the fruit of significant concessions by Pope Benedict XVI designed to bring the group back into the fold. Benedict lifted restrictions on the so-called Traditional Latin Mass in 2007, explicitly as an overture to the SSPX, then readmitted four excommunicated SSPX bishops earlier this year.
Jewish groups were outraged after one of the readmitted bishops, Richard Williamson, told Swedish television that no more than 300,000 Jews “perished in Nazi concentration camps … not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.” On Monday, a German judge ordered Williamson, who made the statement in Germany, to pay a fine that could rise as high as $18,000 (12,000 euro), depending on his income, for breaking the country’s law against Holocaust denial. Williamson, whose lawyer told a reporter that he would probably fight the penalty, was given two weeks to file an appeal.
Another of the readmitted bishops, Alfonso de Galarreta, who is leading the SSPX delegation to the Vatican talks, recently told one of his group’s publications that “we have several years of discussions ahead of us.”