If you care about the SSPX, as I do, I would ask you to carefully consider the ramifications of this scandal. The point of my April 10, 2024, post on social media was to find out what had happened to a certain SSPX press release (mentioned but not linked to in one of the initial internet reports I read) on the Father Rostand case. Since then, I have obtained a screen shot of that press release from the Way Back Machine. Turns out, it was posted on April 5 and quickly taken down by the SSPX. Why?
As one community of believers, let us beg the SSPX to address this issue immediately.
This is not an isolated scandal that negatively impacts the SSPX only. The reports here and here have already gone viral on the Internet, and are naturally being used by some to attack the TLM movement as a whole, which is why I am asking the adherents of the SSPX to join me in demanding full disclosure on behalf of the victims (past, present, and future). After all, we are talking about an alleged pattern of abuse, even and including abuse by a prominent SSPX superior. We are talking about children. If you are attached to the SSPX, we are talking about your children and your grandchildren—alone in confessionals, on camping trips, in classrooms—with monsters in Roman collars.
I'm not in the SSPX and never have been. Speaking personally for a moment, this is much less my problem than it is yours. For thirty years, I have been a parishioner of a diocesan TLM parish, and my wife and I educate our children at home. My kids are not, in other words, at risk. Overarching concerns, however, rise well above my own situation; they include the entire movement, especially in light of Traditionis Custodes, which could soon leave significant numbers of traditional Catholics with just one liturgical option: the SSPX.
In addition, I have spent thirty years defending the SSPX against the charge of schism. I received the Sacrament of Confirmation from Archbishop Lefebvre himself—a distinction I regard as a great honor. I have long been convinced that the Archbishop acted selflessly and for the good of souls in 1988, that history will present him as a hero of the post-conciliar epoch, and that the Church might well canonize him one day. I do not, therefore, wish for this horrific scandal to become a permanent part of his noble legacy.
If it should turn out that the SSPX's own policies are to blame—for God's sake and the sake of the kids—those responsible for such disastrously-failed policies must remove themselves from their positions of authority.
Furthermore, the SSPX is manned by many excellent priests. I know many of them personally, and they want no part of this scandal. For these reasons and many others— including the prevention of even greater scandal—I have in the past entered into this reluctantly and only when the facts were presented after competent investigation, not to denigrate the SSPX, but rather to gain justice for the victims and to prevent further abuse in the future.
The Devil is hard at work, and no priest is above the law, no matter how committed he is to the Latin Mass. I know several victims personally. I have family in the SSPX. I even knew a few of the accused priests, including Father Rostand. But no priest should ever be enabled to harm kids and get away with it—whether he is FSSP, SSPX, ICK, diocesan, etc. Surely, every layperson, every parent, every Traditional Catholic on the planet can agree with that!
As one community of believers, let us beg the SSPX to address this issue immediately. If this is all one big vicious witch hunt, the SSPX is in a prime position right now to destroy it once and for all. But if it should turn out that the SSPX's own policies are to blame—for God's sake and the sake of the kids—those responsible for such disastrously-failed policies must remove themselves from their positions of authority in order to enable radical reform, total transparency, and peace of mind for the faithful moving forward. Enough is enough!
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