Catholic World News
CatholicCulture.org
February 22, 2016
Bishop Richard Williamson, the traditionalist prelate who was dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in 2012, plans to ordain another bishop for his schismatic group.
Bishop Williamson told followers that on March 19, he will ordain Father Thomas Aquinas, the prior of a traditionalist monastery in Brazil, as a bishop. In 2015, on the same date, he presided at the episcopal ordination of Father Jean-Michel Faure, also in Brazil. Bishop Williamson said that new bishops are needed to sustain “the resistance.”
Bishop Williamson was one of the four bishops ordained for the SSPX by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 in defiance of orders from the Holy See. That illicit ordination led to the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre and the bishops that he had ordained. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted those excommunications, in a bid to repair the split between the SSPX and the Holy See.
Under Church law the new ordinations will be regarded as valid but illicit. Canon law stipulates that anyone involved in the ordination of a bishop without approval from the Holy See incurs automatic excommunication.
References:
- The SSPX is no way “out of the woods.” (St. Marcel Initiative)
- Breakaway traditionalist prelate ordains new bishop, incurs new excommunication (CWN, 3/21/15)
https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=27569
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