COPIED FROM TIMES UNION

ALBANY — Bishop Mark O’Connell, the leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, has warned local followers of the ultraconservative Catholic group whose leaders were excommunicated last week by Pope Leo XIV that they are committing “a grave offense against God” and that they, too, could face excommunication.

O’Connell made the announcement in a July 7 letter in which he formally conveyed the news that the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X were in a state of schism resulting from the group’s decision to consecrate four bishops at a ceremony in Switzerland earlier this month in direct defiance of the pope. 

“Such disobedience and disregard for the primacy of the Bishop of Rome as the Successor of St. Peter, the first pope to whom Christ entrusted his Church, is considered a schismatic act and gravely harms the unity of the Church for which Christ so fervently prayed,” the bishop wrote in his letter, which was addressed to the region’s “diocesan family.”

The society, known by its acronym SSPX, has battled with the Vatican for decades. It rejects the modernizing reforms the church undertook in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, changes shorthanded as Vatican II. SSPX celebrates the Latin Mass and considers the current church to be rife with heresies. The Associated Press reported that over 15,000 people attended the July 1 ordination of the four bishops in Econe, Switzerland.

In a decree, the Vatican excommunicated the new bishops and the two existing SSPX bishops who participated in the ceremony. It declared the consecrations a “schismatic act” and that the society itself had created an intentional rupture with the church.

It declared SSPX priests — who number about 750 — to be schismatic, and therefore excommunicated, and invalidated the sacraments of confession and marriage that they administer. The Vatican warned the faithful to stop going to SSPX Mass, decreeing that “those who adhere formally” to the society are similarly schismatic and excommunicated.

The Vatican said that applied to people who are members of the SSPX lay branch and those who “regularly attend” SSPX Mass and formally share its doctrinal positions.

O’Connell’s letter made clear that the Vatican’s decree applied to Catholics in the Albany Diocese.

“To continue to participate in the pastoral activities of an SSPX chapel or church or school after learning of the prohibition would be seen as ‘formal adherence,’” O’Connell wrote. He also singled out two churches, one in Albany County and the other in Washington County, as places the faithful should avoid.

“Out of care for souls,” O’Connell told people to “avoid participating in (SSPX activities) at their various sites within our diocesan boundaries, including St. Michael’s Chapel in Glenmont and the North American Martyrs Chapel in Hudson Falls.” He also rescinded whatever previous permission had been granted to the SSPX for the use of facilities owned by the diocese for meetings. Permission that had also been granted for SSPX clergy to administer the sacrament of marriage and the sacrament of confirmation were also rescinded, the letter said. 

“I grieve over the painful events of today and again pray that efforts will be made on the part of ecclesiastical authorities to heal the breach,” O’Connell wrote. “Nonetheless, the sole perpetrators of today’s state of affairs are the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X and those bishops who have betrayed the sacred vows of their ordination.”

The diocese verified the authenticity of the letter, which the Times Union found circulating on social media, but did not make O’Connell available for an interview, citing his busy schedule as the new leader of the diocese.  A spokeswoman said the bishop may release “updated information” related to the churches named in the letter. 

The precise affiliation of the North American Martyrs Chapel is unclear. It appears on an SSPX website, but when the Times Union called the chapel for comment, a reporter received a text message directing the paper to contact Bishop Donald Sanborn, the Pennsylvania-based leader of the Roman Catholic Institute — a different ultraconservative Catholic group.

Sanborn said his group does not “service” the Hudson Falls parish but that they have “essentially the same ideas,” and that his group is even more hard-line than the group Leo excommunicated. Sanborn was ordained by SSPX’s founder, the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and was a follower of his before Sanborn was expelled amid a dispute involving Lefebvre’s acceptance of some Vatican-approved liturgy. Lefebvre himself was excommunicated in 1988 for ordaining bishops — also in Econe — in defiance of the Vatican.

That excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, nearly two decades after Lefebvre’s death.

In Sanborn’s view, the Roman Catholic Church is no different from any Protestant denomination and organizations like his have an unbroken lineage dating to St. Peter.

“We see the Vatican as persons who do not have the Catholic faith. They should be worried about their adherence,” he said. “It comes down to rupture: If you’re in rupture, you should worry about your own excommunication.”

The priest leading the church in the Glenmont section of Bethlehem, Brendan Hughes, made it clear Wednesday that his church is not affiliated with SSPX and that one “might say” it is more conservative than that group. He said the church is affiliated with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, a traditionalist branch that Hughes says rejects every pope from John XXIII — who convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962 — to the present. John XXIII was made a saint by Pope Francis in 2014. 

O’Connell is “telling people not to come here to fulfill their Sunday obligation,” Hughes said when asked why he thought his church was mentioned in the letter. “Well, we’re not under the authority of the diocese.”

In a lengthy conversation in the church’s narthex, Hughes spoke animatedly about how the Vatican had, in his view, strayed since the 1960s. He was particularly critical of what he saw as successive popes not only tolerating other religions but implying that other faiths may have some concrete spiritual value; he singled out Islam and “Protestant televangelists” as religious groups he said the Vatican was putting on near-equal footing with Catholicism. 

He said about 40 people attended the church regularly. After Mass on Wednesday, one parishioner waited almost half an hour to speak with him while Hughes prayed by himself and tidied up the altar. 

“C’mon, Father,” he said. “I got to get to Trader Joe’s.”

He ended up leaving without an audience.