Society of Saint Pius V
The Society of St. Pius V (SSPV) is a society of Traditionalist Catholic priests formed in 1983 and based in Oyster Bay Cove, New York. On doctrinal and disciplinary grounds, the Roman Catholic Church considers its situation to be at least as canonically irregular as that of the Society of St. Pius X, from which it split, or even to be schismatic. For its part, the SSPV maintains that the present leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is of doubtful legitimacy and no longer adheres to the "true" Roman Catholic religion. It holds that the theory that the Holy See is empty and that nobody now legitimately occupies the position of Bishop of Rome (sedevacantism) may be well-founded and is a topic of legitimate debate.
The foundation of the Society
The SSPV developed out of the much larger Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the traditionalist organisation founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In 1983, Lefebvre expelled the nine priests of the SSPX's Northeast USA District from the society, partly because they were opposed to his instructions that Mass be celebrated according to the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal issued by Pope John XXIII. Other issues causing the split were: Lefebvre's order that Society priests must accept the decrees of nullity handed down by diocesan marriage tribunals; and, the acceptance of new members into the group who had been ordained to the priesthood according to the revised sacramental rites of Paul VI.
"The Nine" (as the group of dissenters was called in SSPX circles) balked at Lefebvre's imposition of the 1962 missal which, they believed, already included significant departures from the liturgical traditions of the Church (for example, adding the name of St. Joseph to the Canon of the Mass). But a more basic reason was the growing concern amongst the Nine that the men who had reigned as pope since the death of Pope Pius XII (d. 1958) had not really been popes. They held that these holders of the papal office had officially taught and/or accepted heretical doctrines and, therefore, very possibly lost or never held the office and charism of the Bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter and vicar of Christ. This belief arose as an explanation for what they saw as the general decline and upheaval in the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), especially with regard to the liturgy. They believed that there had been serious innovations in the traditional teachings of the Church on issues like, for example, religious liberty. None of this, they concluded, could have come to pass under the supervision of legitimate popes and, consequently, it is a debatable point that all of the popes since the Second Vatican Council had not been "true" popes and the bishopric of Rome was debatably vacant since before the council. One of the Nine, Father Daniel Dolan, admitted that, even while he was a member of the SSPX, he never included the pope's name in the Canon of the Mass, because he had already concluded that the See of Peter was vacant (the theory known as sedevacantism).
"The Nine" set up a new priestly society under the leadership of Fr. Clarence Kelly, their former District Superior. The eight other priests were Frs. Thomas Zapp, Donald Sanborn, Anthony Cekada, Daniel Dolan, William Jenkins, Eugene Berry, Joseph Collins, and Martin Skierka.
Splits
Within a few years, about half of the original nine SSPV priests separated from Fr. Kelly. Most of them formed an openly sedevacantist group, known as Catholic Restoration, [1] under Frs. Daniel Dolan and Donald Sanborn, who were later consecrated as bishops in the episcopal lineage of the Vietnamese Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc Pierre Martin. Catholic Restoration, which is based in Bishop Dolan's St. Gertrude the Great Church in West Chester, Ohio, now works closely with another sedevacantist group, the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI).
The other seceders founded independent ministries.
Initially, from 1995 to 1997, Dolan and Sanborn's group vigorously attacked both the validity and the canonical legality of the SSPV's sacramental ministry. The SSPV returned the attacks. Subsequently, however, the group agreed to acknowledge the validity of the remaining SSPV priests.
Bishop Kelly
In 1993, 86-year-old Bishop Alfredo F. Méndez, who until his retirement in 1974 had served as Bishop of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, consecrated Fr. Clarence Kelly as a bishop. This was not announced until a few days after Bishop Méndez's death in 1995. (Ironically per canon law, at the moment of Bishop Kelly's consecration to the episcopacy, a well intended effort to save the Church, he incurred the automatic penalty of excommunication and is, hence no longer a member of the Church that he so endeavors to save). Bishop Mendéz, (likely suffering a similar penalty) had already publicly ordained two seminarians of the SSPV to the priesthood in 1990. [2]
On Wednesday 28 February 2007, Bishop Clarence Kelly consecrated the very young Fr. Joseph Santay of the Society to the episcopacy at Oyster Bay Cove, New York. Some adherents of this group expressed concern that other well qualified and perhaps more capable and mature priests were bypassed in this move. Regretfully, this young and well intended bishop also suffered the consequence of automatic excommunication upon consecration.
The SSPV today
The SSPV currently has five permanent priories, and its priests serve a network of chapels and churches in various parts of the United States and Canada.
The SSPV has an associated congregation of Sisters, the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Our Savior, which was founded by the then Fr. Kelly in 1984. Their congregation's current mother-house and novitiate are located in the Catskill area of upstate New York, and it has three further houses in the United States. The current Mother General is Mother Mary Bosco. The Sisters run schools in the locations of each of their houses, excepting the mother-house, and are also involved in other types of charity work, such as visiting nursing homes.
The Society has a seminary, which is also located in the Catskill area, NY. It operates under the direction of Fr. Paul Baumberger, and its seminarians are ordained by Bishop Kelly. A first small group of seminarians have been ordained to the priesthood in recent years.