In my post the other day on the Swiss vote to ban (Muslim) minarets, I missed something I’ve just learned from The Tablet. While the Swiss Catholic bishops and the Vatican — along with religious leaders across Europe — deplored this assault on religious freedom, the traditionalist Society of St Pius X was delighted. Christa Pongratz-Lippitt and Robert Mickens report:

But the traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), which has its headquarters at Ecône in Switzerland, was overjoyed at the result. In a long article on its homepage it sharply criticised Archbishop Veglio and all bishops in favour of minarets in the name of religious liberty, accusing them of “unCatholic” views.  Such bishops are “either stupid or naive”, the article said, but the Swiss people had recognised the danger of Islam, it concludes.

I’ve searched for this SSPX article in vain; it might have been removed. But it reveals, yet again, how far the SSPX are from the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, and especially from Dignitatis humanae.

Plans are being drawn up to reverse the vote.

Incidentally, George Weigel has some interesting clarifications about the Vatican’s current ‘conversations’ with the SSPX — they are just that, he says; not negotiations.The questions it raises are, eg,

Does the SSPX accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by both reason and revelation? Does the SSPX accept that the age of altar-and-throne alliances, confessional states, and legally established Catholicism is over, and that the Catholic Church rejects the use of coercive state power on behalf of its truth claims? Does the SSPX accept the Council’s teaching on Jews and Judaism as laid down in Vatican II’s Declaration on Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), and does the SSPX repudiate all anti-Semitism? Does the SSPX accept the Council’s teaching on the imperative of pursuing Christian unity in truth and the Council’s teaching that elements of truth and sanctity exist in other Christian communities, and indeed in other religious communities?

After the SSPX reaction to the Swiss minaret referendum, the answers seem pretty clear.

Austen Ivereigh is a Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, at the University of Oxford, and a biographer of Pope Francis. In 2020 he collaborated with Pope Francis on his Let Us Dream: the Path to a Better Future, published by Simon & Schuster.