These Last Days News - June 8, 2026
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The Traditional Latin Mass Does not Need the SSPX...

"Do not abandon My Son any longer by rejecting His Church. Do not judge My Son's Church by man. The foundation is My Son, Jesus. And though the walls may develop cracks, the foundation is solid. Will you not remain and patch these cracks, My children? We do not wish that you break apart into small groups of discord. No schisms must take place in My Son's Church. For all who are baptized a Roman Catholic must die Roman Catholics to enter Heaven. A rejection of the papacy, a rejection of the Faith because of human reasoning shall not be accepted by the Eternal Father in Heaven. Remain faithful and true forever unto the end.” – Our Lady of the Roses, November 20, 1979

"Many now rebel against their leader, their God-given leader, your Vicar. In matters of faith and morals, man must not change the God-given laws, coming from the seat of Peter, and established through tradition upon earth through My Son's Church." - Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1979

The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York. Read more

TheCatholicHerald.com reported on June 8, 2026:

By Wouter J Suenens

The announced episcopal consecrations by the SSPX oblige Catholics attached to tradition to distinguish between questions that are often confused, sometimes by the enemies of the old Mass and sometimes by its most imprudent defenders. Is the Traditional Latin Mass important for the life of the Church, and does it deserve a stable, generous and peaceful place within the Church? May the SSPX present its own institutional survival as though it were identical with the survival of Catholic tradition itself? Would the old Mass still be celebrated today if it were not for Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St Pius X?

The first point deserves to be stated without hesitation. The Traditional Latin Mass is not an eccentric preference of the discontented, nor may it become a political signal disguised as worship. It has nourished the faith of saints, families, priests and ordinary Catholics for centuries, and it continues to help people discover and rediscover the Faith with a seriousness and objectivity that many faithful, especially younger faithful, have found not through nostalgia but through hunger. I discovered it roughly eight years ago, and it helped my faith in a way that cannot be reduced to taste or aesthetics.

The historical claim is more complex. It is often said that, without the SSPX, the Traditional Latin Mass would simply have vanished. There is some understandable human gratitude behind that claim, especially in areas where the TLM is less available. Yet the argument is not only historically too simple; it also reveals a strange lack of faith in divine providence. The liturgy was never the property of one priestly society, and God’s providence is not exhausted by the courage – or audacity – errors or disobedience of one movement.

There were other Catholics who worked for the survival of the old Mass without separating their cause from communion with Rome. The English petition that led to the so-called “Agatha Christie indult” in 1971, the work of Una Voce from the 1960s onwards, the permissions granted under Pope St John Paul II, and the foundation of traditional communities after 1988 all show that the history of the old Mass cannot be reduced to the SSPX.

Indeed, one may ask whether the close association of the Traditional Latin Mass with a canonically irregular and often openly defiant movement has not, in the long run, made it easier for its enemies to treat every traditional Catholic as a potential schismatic. Maybe without the SSPX, we might have had less resistance; we might also have had fewer restrictions? A question to which no one can present a sure answer.

As I absolutely value and love the usus antiquior, seeing what it has done for me and many others, I refuse to accept the idea that it needs the SSPX in order to live. The old Mass is celebrated by communities in full communion with Rome; it is celebrated in diocesan settings; it is celebrated by institutes such as the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest and the Institute of the Good Shepherd; and it is loved by many Catholics who have no desire to make opposition to Rome the organising principle of their spiritual life.

The SSPX may consider new bishops necessary for its own internal continuation, for its seminaries, priests and faithful. That is a claim about the SSPX. It is not a claim about the Church or the TLM. To confuse the two is already to concede far too much to the Society’s own self-understanding, as though the loss or weakening of its structure would be equivalent to the loss of tradition itself. It would not be. The Mass is greater than the Society, older than the Society, and belongs to the Church from which the Society has received it.

This does not require a caricature of those who attend SSPX chapels. Many go there because they have found reverence, clear preaching, a community, and other things of value. In many cases, they were not drawn by detailed theses on Vatican II, but by the simple fact that they encountered a form of Catholic life that seemed more coherent than what they had known elsewhere. That experience must be taken seriously.

Yet it remains true that the SSPX’s existence involves a wider judgement on Vatican II. The danger for many ordinary faithful is that they enter through the door of the old Mass and gradually breathe an atmosphere in which Rome is not loved as the visible centre of communion but examined as a failing institution, in which obedience is treated as conditional upon agreement, and in which the bishops and the Pope are presumed compromised unless they repeat the judgements of the Society.

The argument now advanced is an argument from necessity: the good of souls is so imperilled that unapproved episcopal consecration becomes necessary; the present situation is so exceptional that public disobedience to the Pope, in a matter belonging properly to his authority, must be accepted as an act of fidelity.

The salvation of souls is indeed the supreme law of the Church: the Code of Canon Law itself ends by recalling it. There are extreme situations in which the impossibility of reaching the competent authority may require a person to act in conscience while accepting responsibility before God and the Church. Catholic law has never been legal positivism. It knows equity, epikeia, impossibility and the priority of the supernatural end for which all ecclesiastical law exists.

But this is not such a case. It is one thing to act in conscience when a concrete case has not been placed before the Pope or when the ordinary operation of law is impossible in a way that the legislator could not reasonably have foreseen. It is quite another to invoke necessity when the Holy Father knows the matter, has considered it, and has repeatedly made clear that he does not allow the proposed episcopal consecrations.

At that point the appeal to the salvation of souls becomes something very different. It becomes the claim that one’s own judgement about what is necessary for souls prevails over the well-informed judgement of the Pope precisely in a matter where the Pope’s judgement is constitutive for the order of the Church.

To say, in effect, that the SSPX is necessary for the salvation of souls, as though salvation could not be sought and obtained in obedience to Peter, is to embrace the root premise from which schism inevitably grows. It suggests that the Church’s visible principle of unity has become an obstacle to the salvation for which Christ established the Church. Once that premise is accepted, every act of disobedience can be explained, every warning can be dismissed, every punishment can be interpreted as further evidence that Rome no longer understands the Faith.

The history of the Church gives no comfort to such reasoning. There have been crises far worse than ours: the scandal of the Western Schism, curial corruption, simony, political captivity and moral decadence in Rome. The saints did not respond to those crises by establishing a supposedly purer obedience against the Pope’s own authority. St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden rebuked popes with a freedom that may scandalise many modern courtiers, yet they did so as daughters of the Church. St Peter Damian denounced clerical corruption, yet his reforming zeal did not lead him to replace the Church’s order with his private judgement.

The claim that our crisis is so unprecedented that public disobedience has now become necessary reveals, in that sense, a remarkable lack of historical memory. The Church has passed through darker nights than the present one – and those darker nights may be the best evidence of the divine origin of the Church, as no merely human institution would have survived the sins and corruption of those entrusted with governing it. Yet never did fidelity consist in treating rightful papal authority, especially in matters belonging plainly to the Pope’s prerogative, as something to be set aside because a group of priests judged the emergency too grave.

In the Latin Church, the appointment or confirmation of bishops belongs to the Roman Pontiff. A bishop is not simply a sacramental functionary useful for ordinations and confirmations. He belongs to the visible structure of communion. To consecrate bishops without the mandate of the only living Successor of Peter is therefore a public and visible disobedience in one of the matters by which the unity of the Latin Church is juridically and sacramentally guarded.

Here the central problem of the SSPX becomes unavoidable. They may be right about many things. They may be right that much of the post-conciliar period has been marked by liturgical poverty, confusion, episcopal cowardice and pastoral sentimentalism. They may be right that traditional Catholics have often been treated with injustice. They may be right that certain questions concerning the Council and its reception still deserve more honest theological treatment than they have received.

But they do not seem to realise that, without the Pope, they are nothing. They may preserve rubrics, chant, manuals, discipline and the external signs of Catholic seriousness; yet if, at the decisive moment, they place their own judgement above the authority of Peter in deciding who may be made a bishop in the Latin Church, they are no longer preserving Catholic tradition.

That is why those attached to the TLM should be both firm and clear. We should ask Rome and the bishops for generosity, stability and justice. We should reject the lazy identification of traditional liturgical life with extremism. We should insist that the old Mass can form the faithful in obedience, charity, humility and zeal. But we should also refuse to defend the indefensible merely because it is done by men who speak our liturgical language.

The Traditional Latin Mass does not need the SSPX. It needs priests, families, seminaries, communities and bishops who love it within the visible communion of the Church. It needs traditional Catholics to be more faithful. Above all, it needs the humility to remember that our faith cannot be defended by weakening communion with and trust in Rome.

When the choice is presented as a choice between the self-justifying certainty of the SSPX and the wounded, difficult, sometimes frustrating obedience owed to Peter, I know where I stand. Not because every Roman decision is prudent or every bishop has been a father, and not because the last 60 years have been free of confusion, but because Christ did not build His Church on the private judgement of those who consider themselves the last faithful remnant.

The SSPX may consider these consecrations necessary for itself. They are not necessary for the Traditional Latin Mass, not necessary for Catholic tradition and not necessary for the Church. In a moment of confusion, I prefer to err on the side of Peter.

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"It was the will of the Eternal Father that one universal language be used along with, in comparison with, together with the language of the land. This universal language, Latin, befit and was chosen by the Eternal Father as a universal language for the universal Church, the Roman Catholic Church....” – Our Lady of the Roses, April 10, 1976

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Our Lady of the Roses Awesome Bayside Prophecies... https://www.tldm.org/Bayside/ These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D1 - The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass   PDF
D85 - Tradition  PDF
D123 - Catholic Church, Part 1  PDF
D124 - Catholic Church, Part 2  PDF
D125 - Ecumenism   PDF
D211 - Changes, Part 1 PDF
D212 - Changes, Part 2 PDF
D265 - The Papacy  PDF
D311 - Pray for Your Clergy  PDF

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