San Francisco Frontiers - Sadness and joy as breakaway Catholic group nears schism

The ultra-traditionalist breakaway Catholic group is on a collision course with the Vatican -- and people have come from around the world to see it.

"It's extraordinary. It's a long-awaited moment, a gift," said Maria, the mother of Father Pelayo Muskett Bunge, an Argentine priest who had just been ordained.

He and the four other new priests -- another Argentine, a Belgian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman -- laid their hands on the heads of their loved ones to bestow their first priestly blessings.

Thousands of the faithful crowded around them after attending the four-hour ceremony, held in sweltering heat in a field in Econe, a village in the Rhone valley in Alpine southwest Switzerland, at the foot of the mountains near the society's seminary.

The Society of Saint Pius X is a group of fundamentalist Catholics that strongly opposes the liberal reforms of the Catholic Church imposed by the Vatican II Council in the 1960s.

The brotherhood was founded by the controversial French bishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970.

"We have priestly ordinations every year," but this time they take on a special significance given the "prospect of episcopal consecrations" on Wednesday, explained Alexandre Maret, 41, a Swiss parishioner who knew Lefebvre, who died in 1991 aged 85.

"What he explained to us back then is still relevant today: the doctrinal battle has barely changed," he added.

The community follows a strict interpretation of doctrinal and liturgical tradition and condemns ecumenism -- working for closer unity with other Christian traditions.

The society says it is present in more than 75 countries across six continents, with more than 750 priests and nearly half a million faithful.

In 1988, it illicitly consecrated four bishops, resulting in immediate excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church -- a measure lifted in 2009.

However, the society is preparing to repeat the act of dissent on Wednesday.

It intends to consecrate four new bishops -- two French, one American and one Swiss -- arguing it has only two bishops left, and they are the ones responsible for ordaining new priests.

- 'Pivotal event' -

"It's a very pivotal event for our times in the church," said Samuel Putz, a 26-year-old American lay member who lives in the same Kansas town as Father Michael Goldade, the US priest set to be consecrated bishop.

"Without the work of the society -- the bishops, the priests, the brothers, the sisters of the society -- we'd be in a much more difficult place."

In Econe, around 150 priests took part in Monday's ceremony, which was marked by liturgical splendour, purple and gold.

The Mass -- conducted in Latin, except the homily -- alternated between long silences and hymns.

Before receiving ordination, the five future priests and three aspiring deacons lay face-down on the ground while the Litany of the Saints was chanted in Latin.

For the Vatican, consecrating a bishop without the consent of the pope constitutes a direct act of insubordination.

It results in the automatic excommunication of the bishops involved -- both the newly consecrated and the consecrators -- and is classified as a "schismatic act".

"We continue to uphold the faith, and we believe the Church no longer does so in the way Jesus instituted. That is surely why" the society "bothers the Vatican", said Marie Desclos, a young French laywoman who travelled from Toulouse to attend her cousin's ordination as a deacon.

"If it is accepted, for example, that bishops in China are chosen by the Chinese government, why can't we do the same?" asked Isabel Masuda, 65, from Buenos Aires.

- 'We love the pope' -

The ordination is a "joy" for the faithful, but the Vatican's opposition "is painful because we truly consider ourselves full members of the Church. We love the Church, we love the pope," said Maret.

Putz was of the same mind.

"To see so much pushback from the Holy Father, it's hurting. It hurts. It's very sad. It's devastating," he said.

Although influential in certain conservative circles, it remains a minority group within the Roman Catholic Church and its roughly 1.3 billion faithful.

"Right now, it really feels like we are no longer on the same wavelength. What we say is no longer understood in Rome," said the society's Bishop Bernard Fellay, addressing the faithful on Monday.

"(But) we are doing nothing more than stating what the Church has said for centuries."

H.King--SFF