For a number of years after the 1988 consecrations, there was little if any dialogue between the Society of St. Pius X and the Holy See. This state of affairs ended when the Society led a large pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee in the year 2000.
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A sympathetic Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, approached the SSPX bishops during the pilgrimage and, according to Bishop Fellay, told them that the Pope was prepared to grant them either a personal prelature (the status enjoyed by Opus Dei) or an apostolic administration (the status given to the traditionalist priests of Campos, Brazil).[1] The SSPX leadership responded with distrust,[2] saying that Castrillón was vague on how the new structure would be implemented and sustained, and criticising the Holy See's allegedly heavy-handed treatment of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.[3] They requested two preliminary "signs" before continuing negotiations: that the Holy See grant permission for all priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass; and that its statement that the 1988 consecrations had resulted in excommunication for the clerics involved be declared void.[4]
Cardinal Castrillón refused to grant interviews on the subject, in order "to maintain the privacy of the details of our dialogue", though this silence was broken when his letter of 5 April 2002 to Bishop Bernard Fellay was later published.[5] This contained the text of a protocol summarizing the meeting between the two men held on 29 December 2000. This envisaged a reconciliation on the basis of the Lefebvre-Ratzinger protocol of 5 May 1988; the 1988 excommunications would be lifted rather than declared null. From 2003 onwards, the annual reports of the Ecclesia Dei Commission began to report on dialogue between the Vatican authorities and the SSPX, beginning with "some high-level meetings and... an exchange of correspondence" in 2003,[6] continuing with "dialogue at various levels... [and] meetings, some at a high level" in 2004,[7] and leading to "somewhat improved" dialogue with "more concrete proposals" in 2005.[8]
The year 2005 was of great significance because it saw the accession to the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, who had participated in the 1988 negotiations and who was seen as being sympathetic to the use of the Tridentine liturgy. In August 2005, Benedict met with Bishop Fellay for 35 minutes, at the latter's request.[9] There was no breakthrough, but statements from both sides spoke of the atmosphere as positive. It was reported that the SSPX question was among the topics for discussion at meetings of the Pope with cardinals and Curia officials in early 2006.[10]
In July 2007, the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum, which liberalised the restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Mass.[11] In an accompanying letter, he wrote that he wished to see "an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church" and "to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew" - presumably a reference to the SSPX and other traditionalists in dispute with Rome. Bishop Fellay, while welcoming the Pope's decision, referred to "the difficulties that still remain", and stated that the SSPX wished that the new "favourable climate" would "make it possible - after the decree of excommunication which still affects its bishops has been withdrawn – to consider more serenely the disputed doctrinal issues."[12]
The 2007 Ecclesia Dei report states that "the Pontifical Commission has taken advice from many experts to continue studying concrete juridical ways for the Lefebvrians' reconciliation. The projects drafted to this end have been submitted to the Supreme Authority".[13]
In April 2008, Bishop Fellay issued Letter to Friends and Benefactors No. 72[1], informing the SSPX faithful that, in spite of both Summorum Pontificum and the recent Vatican documents on the true meaning of Lumen Gentium [2] and evangelisation[3], the Society still could not sign an agreement with the Holy See, which was not going to deal with doctrinal errors. Two months later, after a meeting held in Rome between the two, Cardinal Castrillòn Hoyos indicated five conditions that SSPX must comply with as a preparatory step for achieving full communion.[14] The Cardinal did not ask in an explicit way for acceptance of the Second Vatican Council as a true Ecumenical Council or of the validity of the Mass of Paul VI, matters on which the Secretariat of State later made clear agreement is required for unity of doctrine.[15] On several occasions, but especially in the homily Fellay preached at Lourdes for the SSPX Pilgrimage, on 26 October 2008,[16] he replied that the Vatican requests were ambiguous. He also launched a new Rosary Crusade for 1 November to Christmas 2008. The first such Crusade was undertaken to ask for liberalization of Tridentine Mass. The second was to pray that the 1988 excommunications be declared void. Fellay later reported on DICI.org that one million seven hundred thousand rosaries were prayed in this Crusade.
By a decree of 21 January 2009 (Protocol Number 126/2009), which was issued in response to a renewed request dated 15 December 2008 that Bishop Fellay made on behalf of all four bishops whom Lefebvre had consecrated on 30 June 1988, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, by the power expressly granted to him by Pope Benedict XVI, remitted the automatic excommunication that they had thereby incurred, and expressed the wish that this would be followed speedily by full communion of the whole of the Society of Saint Pius X with the Church, thus bearing witness, by the proof of visible unity, to true loyalty and true recognition of the Pope's Magisterium and authority.[17]
A Note of the Secretariat of State issued on 4 February 2009 specified that, while the lifting of the excommunication freed the four bishops from a very grave canonical penalty, it made no change in the juridical situation of the Society of St. Pius X, which continued to lack canonical recognition in the Catholic Church, and that the four bishops remained without any canonical function in the Church and were not exercising legitimately any ministry within it. The note added that future recognition of the Society required full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and of the teaching of Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and repeated the assurance given in the decree of 21 January 2009 that the Holy See would study, along with those involved, the questions not yet settled, so as to reach a full satisfactory solution of the problems that had given rise to the split.[18]
Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this stance in his motu proprio Ecclesiae unitatem of 2 July 2009, in which he declared that by lifting the excommunication of the four bishops he "intended to remove an impediment that might have jeopardized the opening of a door to dialogue and thereby to invite the Bishops and the 'Society of St Pius X' to rediscover the path to full communion with the Church. ... the remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the context of ecclesiastical discipline to free the individuals from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. However, the doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry."
In February 2011, Bishop Bernard Fellay, said that the reconciliation talks with the Vatican would soon be coming to an end, with little change in the views of either side. In addition to disputes over the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council, new problems have been created by plans for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Bishop Fellay said the scheduled beatification of Pope John Paul II on 1 May 2011 poses "a serious problem, the problem of a pontificate that caused things to proceed by leaps and bounds in the wrong direction, along 'progressive' lines, toward everything that they call 'the spirit of Vatican II.'"[19]