What Went Down in Écône

Ed. Note: On July 1 the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four bishops without a pontifical mandate. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991), who founded the traditionalist group in 1970, likewise consecrated four bishops — also without a pontifical mandate — on June 30, 1988, leading to his automatic excommunication and that of the four bishops he consecrated, two of whom are still alive: Bernard Fellay and Alfonso de Galarreta. In 2009 the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops issued a decree remitting the excommunications. Despite a plea from Pope Leo XIV on June 29 to “please turn back!” and reconsider what he called a “schismatic act,” the SSPX proceeded with the consecrations. On July 2 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree announcing the automatic excommunications of the four new bishops, Fellay, and Galarreta. The decree admonishes clerics and laymen “not to adhere to the schism” of the SSPX lest they, too, “ipso facto incur the penalty” of excommunication. James Noel Ward, who traveled from Paris, was the NOR’s man on the ground for the consecration event, which took place at the SSPX campus in Écône, Switzerland. His report follows.

This summer I attended the four-day assembly hosted by the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in Écône, Switzerland, during which four new bishops were consecrated. In the widely available video of the consecration produced by the SSPX, I appear in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment as a chubby muddler in the bottom left-hand quarter of the frame (time stamp 41:48-42:00), wearing my brown seersucker suit, straw hat with a green band, and customary befuddled look. At that instant, I was musing, “What would Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor think of this?” I had gone, in obedience, to the roped section to which security personnel had erroneously directed me, thinking I was a Portuguese speaker.

Here’s what I witnessed over those four days.

Monday, June 29

The event began with a Traditional Latin Mass at 9:00 AM in a sweeping, outdoor “meadow chapel” immediately below the dormitories, chapel, and classrooms that make up the SSPX’s seminary campus. A crowd of nearly 1,000, including the altar party, witnessed Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general emeritus of the SSPX, ordain five priests and three deacons, exhorting the newly ordained to “embrace your cross.” First blessings of the newly ordained priests followed, and many faithful availed themselves of the grace. A well-attended Pontifical Vespers and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament closed the day.

Tuesday, June 30

At 7:15 AM the newly ordained Fr. Pelayo Muskett Bunge (of Argentina) said his first Mass, followed by first Masses said by Frs. Benoît Braun (France), Juan Gandía (Spain), Vincent Richter (Belgium), and Carlos Hernanz Gallego (Argentina) in chapels throughout the campus. First Pontifical Vespers of the Precious Blood at 6:30 PM, with Bishop Fellay presiding, closed the day. It took place in the Seminary Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which was filled with vested seminarians and SSPX priests. The faithful gathered outside the church on the surrounding porches, as there was no room in the limited interior space.

At Vespers I was within eyesight of Bishop Fellay, a vague acquaintance I’d not seen in ten years. Our eyes locked for the briefest of moments (we had no private moment together). Fellay is 68 years old, four years older than your correspondent. Years ago, he looked much younger than I. Now he carries the weight of years, evident in his gait, skin, fading smile, pace, and gesture. I’d never met nor seen in person Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, first assistant general of the SSPX, age 69. My own shape resembles Tolkien and Hobbits so iconically that my students call me Professor Baggins behind my back. Bishop Galarreta’s tailor shares my own tailor’s headaches, but Galarreta sports more color and less grey than Fellay. He did, however, rely on his master of ceremonies and chaplain for everything — and he probably does so even during a Low Mass.

The SSPX’s concern about its ability to continue ordaining priests is real, given what I observed of these two near contemporaries. Neither is much older than I, and my 90-year-old father could outpace them in terms of physical vigor and stamina. The stress of leading the SSPX has not been kind to either man.

Écône is a pocket territory on a hillside, little more than the seminary itself and a nearby power station, and not a proper town. The seminary is composed of several outbuildings for visitors and faculty; a church that can hold 200 souls; a college-style dormitory; an administrative building over the crypt where the society’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve, is entombed; several chapels on various floors; and a classroom building. Winter snowfall requires connecting cloisters and tunnels to all the main buildings in a geometric rabbit warren. Broad porches with hanging gardens also connect facilities.

The valley that contains the adjoining true villages of Riddes, Saxon, and Saillon is lovely, with steep, soaring mountains on either side. However, the fantasy of Switzerland as the mountainous version of middle-earth’s Shire dotted with spotted cows contentedly munching cud in an impossibly green meadow while their signature rustic bells occasionally toll is far from Écône’s humble reality.

The seminary and grounds are orderly, well-tended, and fit for their purpose. There is no baroque extravagance or loud ornamental décor. The seminary is located above what we call in Europe a “zone industrial.” European and Swiss zoning laws are strict and identifiable, urban sprawl and megalopolis proclivities tend to be well shepherded: houses and small shops here, retail centers there, factories here, sheep and goats there. The approach to the SSPX campus is through industrial lanes and access roads, preceded only by tractor-tire-rutted agricultural access roads. The valley center is cut by a Rhône River finger, a major Swiss railway, and a median-divided, four-lane autoroute. Various dotted bridges over these divisions connect Saxon, Saillon, and Riddes, with only two roads into Écône itself.

Powerlines cross to a power station high above the seminary and the meadow chapel on gigantic grey robot-shaped frames a hundred meters high. Also adjacent to the seminary grounds are chain-link-fenced gravel parking lots for large industrial operations that variously make hockey sticks, process fruit juice, bash metal into shapes, and trim lumber. Rotting piles of disused pallets in some factory yards immediately below the seminary strike an uncharacteristically non-Swiss tone.

Surrounding these factories are fruit orchards, parched from the European heatwaves of the previous fortnight. Walking through the apricot, apple, and pear trees, I could not help recalling St. Augustine’s Confessions as children under the age of sagess innocently picked up fallen fruit. This crazy-quilt patchwork continues past seminary-adjacent grounds. The nearest restaurant to Écône is a motorway interchange McDonald’s, and the nearest retail operation is IKEA. Yes, I saw seminarians at McDonald’s at 10:00 PM this evening, laughing and talking and debating, as young philosophy students all over the world do.

Wednesday, July 1

Starting at 6:00 AM, large families clown-car’d out of passenger vans in IKEA’s vast lot and other patches of parking, some over a kilometer from the SSPX campus. Mothers, fathers, and oldest children proceeded to push multiple prams up the hill to the meadow chapel. I lost count of the families with more than seven children — those with ten were common — and I could not keep track of the near score count I tried to make of the kids of the Swiss-German family in full Bavarian loden and dirndl. “Preferential convenient parking for large families was a real organizational problem for our preparations,” said one organizer-seminarian. “A good problem to have,” I replied. We both smiled.

That exchange is an indicative example of the joyous tone I encountered from the moment I arrived until I said goodbye to an SSPX priest/traveling companion in Paris. I heard one harsh exchange — between two Swabian gentlemen about chair space in an enclosure — the only time anyone had even the slightest tone of disquiet in their discourse. Everyone was friendly, polite, and helpful and acknowledged one another with a warmth, grace, and solicitude unseen in even less crowded spaces among ordinary people. Communion lines are less genteel at my U.S. parish in the Florida panhandle, where those in attendance are mostly military personnel and Southerners.

The languages I know are English, French, and German, as well as Latin, so I often heard the same announcements three and four times. Other languages I overheard were Dutch, Swaben, Italian, Frisian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Tagalog, Chinese, Japanese, and differing African languages I could not identify.

The entire four days were extremely well organized. I finalized my registration online on Sunday, June 28, and the events were free to attend (a donation of 50 Swiss francs to cover costs was suggested). Upon arrival, I checked in with an information assistant who spoke French and English, and I received a yellow-orange wristband decorated with the double-heart crown and cross symbol of the SSPX (adapted from the coat of arms of the Vendée) with a tiny QR code. At checkpoints, volunteers used their iPhones to scan my wristband, and I used it for prescreened security, prepaid coffee and meals, and, upon departure, a souvenir four-bottle pack of wine. Belloc would have been pleased.

Attendance this day — the big day, the day of the consecrations — was over 10,000, according to my count-heads-in-squares method (I teach graduate and doctoral-level statistical and sampling methods, so I’m confident of that minimum) and was probably nearer the 15,000 expected and up to the 17,000 some have claimed. There were so many people, the ceremony had something of a “medieval Mass” aspect to it. Folks moved around a lot due to the length of the ceremony (just over six hours), as lots of humanity and lots of elderly and lots of kids equaled lots of interrupted participation in event procedures. Yet it was all well organized, even considering these multiple eventualities.

Cranks? Other than me? Maybe two dozen folks in weird outfits or sporting odd tattoos. One guy was live-action roleplaying in a velour version of a medieval burgher, another had a homemade cape of the Vendée sacred heart, and flags and banners of various patron saints and Our Lady were carried proudly by a few over-enthusiastic but good-hearted faithful. Mexican flags were waved. One tall, 80-percent-tattooed guy in cargo shorts and a wifebeater had pious images inked on his entire skull, neck, shoulders, arms, and what I could see of his legs. The radiance of his smile would have converted a manic Trotskyite.

Everyone else — and I mean everyone else — looked like normal families, old married couples, groups of young men, groups of young women, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or volunteers in blaze vests. And priests. Lots and lots of priests. And nuns. Lots and lots of nuns. All in full habit. Women dressed modestly, men with ties. Lots of straw hats. Lots of white baseball hats with “Écône 2026” printed on them. And seminarians. Lots and lots of seminarians. In full cassock. Security was good, and medical was on standby, with a well-equipped medical tent. And yes, there were plenty of toilets.

Priests in the open air heard confessions, each with a long line. I counted at least 30 confessors during the whole event. Each confession station had a sign with the languages the priest spoke (“Deutsch, Italiano, English,” for example), a simple kneeler, and a priest in a plastic lawn chair who took his time with each penitent.

The ceremony began at 8:30 AM, and the procession took forever, with the bishop-consecrators entering the tent at almost exactly 9:00 AM. The first order of business: the Habamus.

The principal consecrator, Bishop Galarreta, asked the notary whether he had a papal apostolic mandate: “Habetis mandatum apostolicum?” The notary, Fr. Foucauld Le Roux, secretary general of the SSPX, read in French: “It is the Catholic and Roman Church, always faithful to the holy traditions received from the Apostles, who in entirely exceptional circumstances demands that we provide for the upholding of these traditions, that is the deposit of faith and that we take the means necessary to transmit them faithfully to all men for the salvation of their souls.” He continued, quite aggressively, “From Vatican Council II up to the present day, the authorities in the Church have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith and have been acting against holy tradition. They will no longer endure sound doctrine, turning their hearing away from the truth and turning toward fables, as St. Paul says to Timothy in his Second Epistle.”

A friend pointed out that Archbishop Lefebvre, during the 1988 consecrations, lied and said “Habamus” — we have permission. No such claim was made this time.

The ceremony continued with the oaths and a series of specified prayers, according to the 1962 missal.

During the entire six hours, trains regularly passed on the valley rail line, and cars whizzed by on the autoroute. In the distance I could glimpse shoppers in autos trying to get in and out of big-box-store parking lots. From our vantage point on the mountainside foothill, we could see quite a lot of the daily comings and goings of valley residents. Our crowd must have been a strange sight for these ordinary passersby.

The strangest simultaneous activity external to the proceedings was anomalous. During the actual consecrations — the imposition of hands and the consecrating prayers — far above the tent and valley, a tiny stunt plane executed lines, loops, rolls, spins, and, at the moment of consecration, hammerheads (also known as stall turns). The plane performed three hammerheads, not four, which would have been congruent with someone planning such a flourish for the ceremony. I checked, and there is a tiny airstrip a few kilometers from Écône, popular with stunt-plane enthusiasts. But on a Tuesday at 10:00 AM? Over our exact geolocation? A weird coincidence.

By noon, in my section of the sheep meadow enclosure, temperatures had risen and the sun took on a harsher fire. This fair-skinned ginger-boy had a parasol to keep him from becoming a red-neck lobster-man, sunscreen forgotten. Mrs. Ward remarked on my exponentiated freckles when we checked in that evening on videocall.

Shortly after noon, and shortly after the consecration of the bread and wine, the sky opened and a deluge commenced, delaying communion of the faithful. While we waited for the rain to stop, we said a Rosary — in Latin, of course. The fifth decade was for Pope Leo. By my count, he was prayed for five times during the ceremony, many more times throughout events on other days, and at every Vespers and private Mass.

At approximately 1:00 PM the rain stopped, the skies cleared, we finished the Rosary, and the meadow soil was so parched that it dried up almost immediately. Not Fatima-dry, but pretty dry. At that point, three scores of priests — with an assistant holding a white and yellow parasol in Vatican hues, and another a communion paten — dispersed into the crowds in the meadow. Communicants in an orderly fashion kneeled at the rope boundary of the enclosures, priests went down the lines, and new folks replaced those who had communicated. As I was walking up a path, clusters of seminarians and priests passed me to communicate the stray faithful at the edges of the meadow: mothers and fathers caring for babies, elderly seeking shade (the heat and humidity had returned with full force), those whom nature called, loners, and folks at duty stations for security, lighting, assistance, power, and so on.

After ablutions and blessings, the newly consecrated bishops received miter, crozier, and throne. Following that ceremonial sitting, they also went out into the crowds, accompanied by their chaplains, and gave blessings to the kneeling faithful. A long recessional followed, and things finally wound down at 2:45 PM.

A late lunch in large food tents with capable catering followed. Many families picnicked and many, including me, retired to hotel rooms for a well-deserved nap.

The proceedings were documented by a professional audio-visual team (for liturgy and historic-event buffs, the SSPX’s channel and recording are first quality). Following the ceremony, I spoke with the chief camera crane operator at the entrance of the tent chapel, a local man who works all over Switzerland and, ironically, is a faithful member of a Protestant church. He said they were prepared for the sustained cloudburst and had radio contact with weather alerts, and the reason the “recording will look so good” was thanks to the excellent director of the event and their multiple stationary and crane cameras. “This was an easy one” to video record, he said. “Sports is much harder.”

I stopped by the packed “Press” tent on my way out, where some 25 reporters were filing stories on laptops, and correspondents were recording video reports in multiple languages, all via dedicated Wi-Fi.

As I walked the three kilometers back to my car, the seminary church’s eight bells started a quarter peal, clearly heard in both directions across the valley floor. They were still ringing an hour later. I did not count all the changes, and though it was short of a 5040 Plain Bob Minor, it was impressive nevertheless.

Thursday, July 2

The First Pontifical Mass at 9:00 AM had a fraction of the consecration’s crowd, perhaps 3,000. The most controversial statements were made by newly consecrated bishop Michael Goldade, an American, whom I didn’t see crack a single smile the entire four days. “If the Catholic Church in her tradition brings forth life, the modernist Church is a desert that kills everything it touches,” he intoned. Goldade apparently could barely contain his vitriol. He argued that the Church’s post-Second Vatican Council direction has led to declining vocations, empty churches, and a weakening of the faith. He insisted that a return to the Church’s traditional teachings and liturgy is the path to spiritual renewal. I had a hard time finding any lilt of joy in the tone of his voice when he delivered that encouragement, with which I strongly agree. If I were he, I would be happier about it. Bishop Fellay is an affable, smiling, gentle, soft-spoken man. Bishop Goldade is not cast in the same mold.

Pope St. John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, expressed the hope that the division between the Latin Church and the schismatic East over the fourth mark of the Church — communion with the Apostle Peter and his successor in Rome — would be healed in his pontificate. “The Church must breathe with her two lungs!” he wrote (no. 54). The very next sentence reads: “In the first millennium of the history of Christianity, this expression refers primarily to the relationship between Byzantium and Rome,” thus appealing to both the earliest Church’s practice and the authority and witness of her past.

Yet John Paul also scandalized the faithful when in May 1999 he kissed a copy of the Qur’an, a crucial historical moment his critics and detractors used to argue that he — a pope — had embraced Karl Rahner’s theology that “truth in other religions entails salvation in other religions.” In an ironic coincidence, Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca” was the number-one radio and MTV hit at the time. Crazy life, indeed, as more people know of the tune than the kiss.

Among faithful Catholics who embrace the totality of the Church’s magisterial, divine, and supernatural teachings, hard words and armchair recriminations have followed since John Paul’s rash act, amplifying claims of sedevacantism. Circumlocutions and bloviated, corkscrew logic — whether via spilled ink or speed-of-light flying bytes, bits, and terabytes — have clogged our consciences ever since.

Ambiguity and scrupulosity equally have vexed me since I was received into the Catholic Church and confirmed during the Chrism Mass of 2008 in the Diocese of Evry, France. A convert from the Anglo-Papalist party of the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA), my arc of being in the Catholic Church almost parallels the NOR’s. Regarding the consecrations in Écône: I have seen all that before in the various horrors of ECUSA’s meltdown, and the subsequent alphabet soup of trad efforts to multiply bishops who celebrate the True-1928-Book-of-Common-Prayer-in-Our-Country-Club’s-Basement-Rec-Room. After witnessing ECUSA become a well-endowed cult and then a shadow of her former grandeur — a whitewashed tomb — I thought I’d left all that behind. Finding similar splits in the beams of the Barque of Peter is, frankly, depressing.

So, when folks — even cardinals from the Roman curia — fire off a hot fax with the word schismatic in it, I recall the authoritatively pronounced schism of the East, John Paul II’s broadness in Ut Unum Sint, and his rash “ecumenical” gesture, and I pour myself a refreshing lemonade and say a prayer for St. Joan of Arc’s intercession — she who was burned for heresy and yet later declared a saint.

Call me medieval or Paleo-Ultramontane or just plain nuts, but what I have not seen or heard of is a pope, dressed in his full pontifical, crozier in hand, with bell, book, and candle, and assembled curia cardinals, entering his cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, and, in front of the Blessed Sacrament and the sacred relic of the altar St. Peter used, excommunicating anyone by name. Sorry to insist, but I really think that is what it takes. Administrative excommunication according to rules and definitions and canons and curial opinions and issued by satraps in processes with the modern equivalent of a wax tablet marked with a pointy stick is weak sauce and akin to a carbon copy of a parking ticket. Especially when the solemnity of such an act requires a full statement with all the stuff.

The Church has this stuff, to be able to say this stuff. So use the stuff. It makes things clear. And we need clarity, not more ambiguity. Ambiguity in the hermeneutics of continuity got us to the meadow in Écône on July 1, Feast of the Precious Blood — a beautiful ceremony with joyous faithful. In a world in which every package we open has a pamphlet enumerating minutiae in legal obscurantism that we just ignore and throw away, getting on with our lives, a sternly worded press release has the moral force of the seal on a yogurt cup. We are hungry — fine print be damned. A solemn ceremony, on the other hand, is visually arresting, and it draws the snapped attention of those of us who’d prefer to pay, pray, and obey as we muddle our way to Heaven.

The Church has this stuff, to be able to say this stuff. So use the stuff.

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