Finding Common Ground Between Rome and the SSPX

Fr. Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, recently issued a “Declaration of Faith” addressed to Pope Leo XIV. This declaration seems to express the Society’s understanding of the essentials of the Catholic Faith. As the declaration’s preamble states, “It seems to us to correspond to the minimum indispensable to be in communion with the Church, and to truly call ourselves Catholics and, consequently, your sons.”

In the lead-up to the planned July 1, 2026, episcopal consecrations, the SSPX rejected Rome’s offer of doctrinal dialogue on the grounds that “we both know in advance that we cannot agree doctrinally, particularly regarding the fundamental orientations adopted since the Second Vatican Council.” Fr. Pagliarani also said that his previous attempt at dialogue in 2019 was shut down by Rome because of an assumed irreconcilability. It seems that, from the Society’s perspective, and perhaps from Rome’s too, their positions are incompatible.

Certainly, huge disagreements exist. But with a bigger rupture looming on the horizon, it’s worth considering what, if any, common ground can be discovered between Rome and the Society on doctrinal matters. Fr. Pagliarani’s document offers a useful framework to do so. To that end, a speculative analysis of the Pagliarani Declaration of Faith side by side with Roman doctrinal statements follows.

If at any point I misrepresent the positions of the Society or Rome, it’s an unintentional error, and I welcome correction. I am not a theologian; simply an interested layman who longs for reconciliation between Rome and the Society. I submit everything I write here to the judgment of the Church.

Marian Cooperation in Redemption

The Pagliarani Declaration states,

[Christ] is therefore the sole Mediator between God and men and the sole way to come to the Father. Only he who knows Him knows the Father. By divine decree, the Most Holy Virgin Mary has been directly and intimately associated with the entire work of Redemption.

This is almost identical to the words of the Holy Father, Pope Leo, in his Wednesday audience of May 13, 2026:

The Council…recalls that the sole Mediator of salvation is Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim 2:5-6), and that his Mother Most Holy “in no way impedes, but rather fosters the immediate union of the faithful with Christ (cf. LG, 60). At the same time, “predestined from eternity by that decree of divine providence which determined the incarnation of the Word to be the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin…in this singular way…cooperated by Her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the work of the Saviour in giving back supernatural life to souls. Wherefore She is our mother in the order of grace.”

Thus, Pagliarani and the pope agree that Mary was intimately united to Jesus’ entire salvific work, cooperating with it in a special way.

The Pagliarani Declaration continues, “To deny this association—in the terms received from Tradition—is therefore to alter the very notion of Redemption as willed by divine Providence.”

Mater Populi Fidelis—released by the DDF under Pope Leo—discourages the use of the term “Co-Redemptrix” and qualifies the use of “Mediatrix of All Graces.” This is what Fr. Pagliarani seems to object to here. However, it should be noted that these terms emerged relatively recently (15th or 16th century), and there were neo-scholastic theologians still debating their appropriateness at least as recently as the 1910s.

For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1913, in its entry on “Intercession (Mediation),” argued in favor of using the term “mediation” only in relation to Christ and not Mary, and instead using only the term “intercession” to refer to Mary’s mediation of grace. Similarly, in his 1914 work Mariology: A Dogmatic Treatise on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, neo-scholastic theologian Joseph Pohle concludes against the use of the term Co-Redemptrix:

It would be wrong to call her redemptrix, because this title obscures the important truth that she herself was redeemed through the merits of Jesus Christ by what theologians technically term preredemption. Even the title coredemptrix had better be avoided as misleading.

Of course, one can legitimately disagree with Pohle’s arguments, but the fact that he and others were making them a century ago shows that these specific Marian titles are not considered part of the deposit of faith.

Furthermore, in a November 25, 2025, Vatican Press Conference, Cardinal Fernández clarified that Mater Populi Fidelis was not meant as a condemnation of the historical use of the term “Co-Redemptrix,” nor a prohibition of its continued use in private devotion, though the Vatican will no longer use the term in its official texts.

The (possibly unfortunate) prudential decision not to use these particular Marian titles cannot be equated with a denial of Mary’s special cooperation in the redemptive work of Christ, a reality that is, in fact, affirmed in Mater Populi Fidelis more than once. So perhaps the SSPX and Rome are not as distant on this point as it might at first appear.

No Salvation Outside the Church

The Pagliarani Declaration states,

There is only one Faith and one Church by which we may be saved. Outside the Roman Catholic Church, and without the profession of Faith that she has always taught, there is neither salvation nor remission of sins. Consequently, every man must be a member of the Catholic Church in order to save his soul, and there is but one baptism as the means of being incorporated into her. This necessity concerns the whole of humanity without exception and embraces without distinction Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists.

 Vatican II states something very similar in Lumen Gentium:

Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, [this council] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.

It’s true that Vatican II adds a qualification:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

Theologians traditionally describe this as belonging to the Church in voto—in desire—rather than belonging to her in re—in reality or actuality.

The qualification made by Vatican II here is completely traditional and likely aligns with the Society’s understanding of the issue. The distinction between belonging to the Church in desire versus in actuality was made well before Vatican II. For instance, in a 1949 letter to the Archbishop of Boston regarding the errors of Fr. Feeney, the Holy Office wrote,

This dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For it was not to private judgment that Our Saviour gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposits of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church…among the commandments of Christ, one that holds not the least place, is that by which we are commanded to be incorporated by Baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, and to remain united to Christ and to his Vicar, through whom He Himself in a visible manner governs the Church on earth. Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

The letter then makes the same qualification as Vatican II:

That one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.

The SSPX itself cites the Holy Office’s letter to explain the proper meaning of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, so we can presume that there is agreement between Rome and the SSPX on this point as well.

The Identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church

The Pagliarani statement holds that “The Roman Church alone possesses simultaneously the four marks that characterize the Church founded by Jesus Christ: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.”

Lumen Gentium affirms the same thing:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as “the pillar and mainstay of the truth”. This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.

The SSPX has objected that the term “subsists in” suggests that the Church of Christ is not identical with the Catholic Church, that the Church of Christ could also be found elsewhere. However, clarifications from the Vatican over the years show that this is not the case. In “Notification on the Book Church: Charism and Power by Father Leonardo Boff O.F.M.,” the CDF rejected the idea that the Church of Christ could subsist in other Christian communities besides the Catholic Church. It stated:

Boff appeals to the constitution Lumen Gentium (No. 8) of the Second Vatican Council. From the Council’s famous statement, “Haec ecclesia (sc. unica Christi Ecclesia)…subsistit in Ecclesia Catholica” (“this Church (that is, the sole Church of Christ)…subsists in the Catholic Church”), he derives a thesis which is exactly the contrary to the authentic meaning of the Council text, for he affirms: “In fact it (sc. the sole Church of Christ) may also be present in other Christian Churches” (p. 75). But the Council had chosen the word subsistit—subsists—exactly in order to make clear that one sole “subsistence” of the true Church exists, whereas outside her visible structure only elementa Ecclesiae—elements of Church—exist; these—being elements of the same Church—tend and conduct toward the Catholic Church.

In addition, in 2007 the CDF issued “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church,” affirming that “subsistit” means the “perduring, historical continuity and permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.” The CDF also issued a commentary on the document that explained,

the Second Vatican Council did not intend to change—and therefore has not changed—the previously held doctrine on the Church…the Council Fathers simply intended to recognise the presence of ecclesial elements proper to the Church of Christ in the non-Catholic Christian communities. It does not follow that the identification of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church no longer holds. (emphasis added)¹

Some object to the notion that elements of the Church could exist outside the visible structure of the Catholic Church. However, to deny that any elements of the Church exist outside her visible boundaries one would have to deny either (a) the presence of grace, Scripture, baptism, and other valid sacraments (in the case of the Orthodox) in non-Catholic groups; or (b) that these “elements of sanctification” truly belong to the Catholic Church, and her alone.

If one denies a, then one is denying an obvious fact. If one denies b, then one is asserting that elements of sanctification can exist that are not proper to the Catholic Church; one asserts that these non-Catholic groups possess valid Scripture and sacraments in their own right, as something belonging to them and not to the Catholic Church, which would clearly be erroneous if not heretical. There is only one baptism—the baptism of the Catholic Church. If it is found outside her visible bounds, it still remains an element of her.

The only conclusion is to accept that—as a tragic result of schisms over the course of the centuries—genuine elements of the Catholic Church exist outside her visible boundaries. They have been “stolen,” so to speak, by non-Catholic groups; and yet, in God’s mercy, they may retain some efficacy for salvation provided those who make use of them remain ignorant of the necessity to visibly belong to the Catholic Church.

The “subsistit” terminology has certainly introduced confusion and lent itself to error. But is it possible that Rome and the SSPX are saying something very similar, just in different terms?

The Question of Partial Communion with the Church

Fr. Pagliarani asserts that the Church’s unity

flows essentially from the adherence of all her members to the one true Faith, faithfully preserved, taught, and handed down by the Catholic hierarchy throughout the centuries. The denial of even a single truth of the Faith destroys faith itself and renders radically impossible all communion with the Catholic Church.

Fr. Pagliarani’s statement that “The denial of even a single truth of the Faith…renders radically impossible all communion with the Catholic Church” would seem to be a veiled criticism of the notion of “partial” or “imperfect” communion between the Catholic Church and non-Catholics or non-Catholic groups, an idea that Rome has made frequent use of since Vatican II. The idea definitely lends itself to misunderstanding and error. However, it is not without any precedent in pre-Vatican II theology.

Traditional Catholic theology posits a threefold bond that establishes visible membership in the Church: unity of faith, sacraments, and government. These three bonds are cemented together essentially by submission to the governing authority of the Church, since it is the Church’s governing power that legislates the sacraments and clarifies what must be believed by all members.

This formulation of the three bonds necessarily includes the possibility that someone—or some group—might maintain some of the bonds but not all of them (i.e., a schismatic who maintains faith and sacraments but not unity of government). In such a case, the person in question is bound to the Church partially. They are really tied to her by something—either faith or sacraments or government—but not by all three at once, as should be the case. A schismatic who holds all the Church’s doctrines and receives valid sacraments certainly has a closer—though imperfect—relationship to the Church compared to a Buddhist who possesses none of the three bonds.

Pope Pius XII already envisaged some form of partial or imperfect relationship with the Church in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, wherein he speaks of those who are not visible members (i.e., do not possess all three bonds of membership) but who nevertheless “by an unconscious desire and longing…have a certain relationship with the Mystical Body of the Redeemer.”

Rome still holds that all three bonds are needed in order to visibly unite someone to the Church. Lumen Gentium reiterates the traditional threefold bond (faith, sacraments, governance) that is necessary for “full communion,” by which it means membership in the Church:

They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her…The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion.

What has changed, it seems, is the framing of the issue. The term used today is “full communion with the Church,” instead of “membership in the Church.” A regrettable change, arguably, but one that, perhaps, does not represent such a different understanding of ecclesiology from the SSPX’s, once the terms are properly understood.

As noted above, the Pagliarani Statement holds that “The denial of even a single truth of the Faith destroys faith itself and renders radically impossible all communion with the Catholic Church.” Here, common ground with Rome depends on what is meant by “communion.” If by “communion” is meant “membership,” this is certainly true—provided the denial in question is an obstinate and pertinacious denial of dogma, which involves a rejection of the Church’s teaching authority. In that case, the bond of faith has been broken, which is one of the bonds necessary for visible membership/full communion.

If, on the other hand, by “communion” is meant “relationship” in a broader sense, then this assertion seems to differ from the Roman position. Rome clearly holds that non-Catholic groups can have a certain relationship or closeness with the Church without being actually incorporated into her.

Indeed, any validly baptized person has entered into some kind of relationship with the Catholic Church since baptism makes a person a member of Christ. As Aquinas writes, “for this end is Baptism conferred on a man, that being regenerated thereby, he may be incorporated in Christ, by becoming His member.”

Baptism is therefore at least the beginning of incorporation into the Catholic Church. Of course, as such, it is oriented toward full visible membership in the Church. Unitatis Redintegratio articulates it like this:

Baptism therefore establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it. But of itself Baptism is only a beginning, an inauguration wholly directed toward the fullness of life in Christ. Baptism, therefore, envisages a complete profession of faith, complete incorporation in the system of salvation such as Christ willed it to be, and finally complete ingrafting in eucharistic communion.

Baptized non-Catholics, then, are linked with Catholics by virtue of their Catholic baptism, but they are still not fully in communion with the Church through the presence of all three bonds.

The notion of “partial communion” often arises in discussions of ecumenism. The buzzword “ecumenism” has led to many errors and abuses that have tried to place the Catholic Church on the same level as other Christian groups or even non-Catholic religions. As Fr. Pagliarani rightly states, true ecumenism seeks to bring about the return of separated Christians to the Catholic Church. It’s worth noting, however, that even as controversial a document as Unitatis Redintegratio states something similar to Fr. Pagliarani’s position:

when the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion have been gradually overcome, all Christians will at last, in a common celebration of the Eucharist, be gathered into the one and only Church in that unity which Christ bestowed on His Church from the beginning. We believe that this unity subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose.

In summary, the question of communion with the Church is a complex one, and this area includes both agreement and disagreement between the SSPX and Rome.

The Sacrificial Nature of the Mass

The Pagliarani Declaration holds that

The Holy Mass is the perpetuation in time of the Sacrifice of the Cross, offered for many and renewed upon the altar. Although offered in an unbloody manner, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is essentially expiatory and propitiatory…Consequently, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can in no way be reduced to a mere commemoration, to a spiritual meal, to a sacred assembly celebrated by the people, to the celebration of the Paschal mystery without sacrifice, without satisfaction of divine justice, without expiation of sins, without propitiation, and without the Cross.

In practice, the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of the Mass has been tragically obscured by the current liturgical crisis, at least in many parts of the West. However, this denial of the sacrifice is not the official position of the Roman magisterium, which has continued to affirm the sacrificial nature of Holy Mass.

For example, Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium teaches

At the Last Supper, on the night when He was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until He should come again.

In Credo of the People of God, Paul VI formally declared,

We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars.

Finally, the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1367, states,

The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: “The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.” “And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner…this sacrifice is truly propitiatory.”

So there seems to be fundamental agreement on this point.

The Relationship Between Church and State

Toward the end of the Pagliarani Declaration, we read,

The submission of institutions and nations, as such, to the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ flows directly from the Incarnation and the Redemption. Therefore, secularism of institutions and nations constitutes an implicit denial of the divinity and universal kingship of Our Lord. Christendom is not a mere historical phenomenon, but the only order willed by God among men.

This appears to be an oblique reference to Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae and its teaching on religious liberty within states. The SSPX sees in DH a contradiction to prior papal magisterium that holds that the state should be (at least indirectly) subordinated to the Catholic Church, that Catholicism ought to be actively promoted by the state as the one true religion, and that false religions ought to be suppressed, at least to some degree.

The philosopher Thomas Pink has provided a penetrating interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae based on the official commentary of the council fathers and the teaching of Leo XIII. He has argued that there is actually continuity between pre-Vatican II magisterium and DH.

His reading asserts that when DH forbids states from coercing citizens on religious matters, it is doing so not on the basis that men and societies are free to believe whatever they want (the error of liberalism, secularism, and religious indifferentism, condemned by past popes and rightly rejected by the SSPX). Rather, it does so on the basis that states are not competent as such to regulate religious matters. Supernatural matters are completely beyond the state’s competency, as Leo XIII taught.

However, they are not beyond the Church’s competency. She has the authority to regulate such things, and indeed she has the right to coerce in matters of religion. When medieval confessional states coerced citizens on religious matters, then, they were doing so as instruments of the Church, her temporal arm acting on her behalf with authority delegated by her, and not on their own authority, which is limited to temporal concerns and cannot infringe on the religious conscience.

The situation obviously becomes different when dealing with modern states that are not united to the Church and therefore cannot receive a share in her spiritual authority that would allow them to coerce on religious matters. This modern situation is the one DH is addressing. If this is indeed the correct reading of what DH intends to say, it is not so far from the SSPX’s own position.

The CDF’s reply to Lefebvre’s dubia on Dignitatis Humanae lends further support to Pink’s reading. The reply states:

The doctrine of DH does not defend “the religious agnosticism of the State”: the rulers, as rulers and not only as men, must seek the truth and adhere to it (cf. DH 1), and ensure that the state promotes the true religion, that is to say, the Catholic religion. DH does not say that the State cannot take into account the distinction between the Catholic religion and other religions (for example, by granting special recognition to the Church, by contributing to the subsistence of the clergy, etc.). The precise object of the Declaration is not what the State must do to satisfy God’s duties, but for its sake what the State could not do with respect to the human conscience…The distinction of competences between Church and State, and the general affirmation of DH 3 (the State must promote the religious life of citizens), does not exclude that the Catholic Religion can and must be helped in such a special way by the state, depending on the circumstances.

Conclusion

Of course, the brief analysis provided here by no means resolves all the tensions and disagreements between Rome and the SSPX. It hardly even scratches the surface. And it may be true that doctrinal accord between the Society and Rome is truly impossible.

But on the other hand, it seems that there might be enough common ground between the Society’s positions and Rome’s positions to warrant further dialogue.

I pray that such discussions take place, both so that ambiguities in the modern magisterium may be clarified in accordance with traditional teaching and so that the SSPX will not feel compelled to go to drastic measures such as consecrating bishops against the will of the pope, who is the source of all jurisdiction in the Church.

1. The words of Cardinal Ratzinger in Deus locutus est nobis in Filio are also helpful here: “The word subsistit derives from ancient philosophy, as it was later developed among the Scholastics. It corresponds to the Greek word hypostasis, which of course plays a key role in Christology in describing the union of divine and human natures in the one person of Christ. Subsistere is a special case of esse. It refers to existence in the form of an individual subject…. With the word subsistit, the Council wanted to express the singularity and non-multipliability of the Church of Christ, the Catholic Church: the Church exists as a single subject in the reality of history. But the difference between subsistit and est also embraces the drama of ecclesial division: for while the Church is only one and really exists, there is being which is from the Church’s being—there is ecclesial reality—outside the Church.”