Vatican holds reconciliation talks with SSPX

(June 14, 2012) The head of the breakaway traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) held talks with the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official on Wednesday in the Vatican, in an effort at reconcile the breakaway group with the Catholic Church. A Vatican statement on Thursday said that Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith president of the Pontifical Commission 'Ecclesia Dei’ received Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society to present the Holy See's evaluation of the text submitted in April by the Society in response to the Congregation’s ‘Doctrinal Preamble’ which had been presented to the Society on 14 September 2011. The subsequent discussion offered an opportunity to provide appropriate explanations and clarifications. Bishop Fellay promised to make his response known within a reasonable lapse of time. Also during the meeting, a draft document was submitted proposing a Personal Prelature as the most appropriate instrument for any future canonical recognition of the Society. As declared in an earlier statement last month, the cases of the other three bishops of the Society of St. Pius X will be dealt with separately and singularly. The society's founder, the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected some teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the modernizing reforms instituted in its wake, was excommunicated for ordaining Bishop Fellay and three other bishops without papal permission in 1988.