At one time, for some odd reasons which you can probably guess, I became obsessed with several ultra-conservative offshoots of the Roman Catholic Church. I wrote about having dinner with a bishop in the Old Catholic Church in America after I left the Jesuits in the mid-70s. I also wrote about Benedict’s problem when he lifted the excommunication of the neo-Nazi SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson in 2009. However, just because my attention has drifted and I am no longer devilishly obsessed does not mean others need follow my change of heart.
The dates of the birth and death of Jesus are only estimates, so why nail your operation to one specific day out of the 738,000 days (or over 2,028 years) since the birth of Jesus? The SSPX seem to have arbitrarily pulled December 4, 1563 out of the hat — the closing of the final session of the Council of Trent, or perhaps it was July 18, 1870, during the First Vatican Council in the constitution Pastor Aeternus, when Pius 9 got what he wanted — the word of the Pope reverberates in Heaven, or perhaps August 20, 1914 when Pius 10 left us, and the war against Modernism in limbo, but with the final design of the fiddle back Chasuble etched in fashion history. Find an auspicious date. Start a real religion. Cement your creed in time.
While there is no official or exact count for all Christian denominations worldwide, sociologists and researchers (such as the Center for the Study of Global Christianity) estimate that there are over 45,000 distinct Christian denominations or sects worldwide. How to choose our enemy? One criterion might be that they believe something that differs from what you and your peeps believe. That’s a popular choice. Another might be the size of their army.
I find SSPX a bit of an outlier for a Papal enemies list. I think it is their history, having been courted by Pope Benedict with special treatment. I had some fun with AI, the Devil’s workshop. Let’s run the numbers.
In the photo, Alfonso de Galarreta, Bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X, ordains four new bishops without Vatican approval. The SSPX has approximately 1,500 formal members (including bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers, and sisters). Additionally, the traditionalist Catholic society claims a global following of roughly 500,000 to 1 million lay adherents. Robust numbers compared to what follows.
By contrast, the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht—through its global federation, the Union of Utrecht—has far fewer members worldwide, ranging from 58,800 to 115,000. They also question the authority of the Pope, though on slightly different grounds than the SSPX, but they’re ancient history, having stepped out of the Roman fold at the end of Vatican I, October 20, 1870, when the question of infallibility was settled, according to mainstream Roman ecclesial history.
The Palmarian Catholic Church is an independent traditionalist sect not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. They have their own popes (the current one is Pope Peter III) who reside in the town of El Palmar de Troya in the Andalusia region of southern Spain. After the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978, Clemente Domínguez claimed that he had been mystically crowned Pope of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ and was to reign as Pope Gregory XVII from El Palmar de Troya. There are an estimated 500 to 1,500 Palmarian Catholics worldwide today. Small change. Piddling army.
The origins of the Palmarians as a distinct body can be traced to the alleged Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Palmar in Andalusia, Spain, beginning in 1968. Two men became particularly associated with this movement over time: Clemente Domínguez y Gómez and Manuel Alonso Corral. The former was known as a charismatic visionary and seer, while the latter was the intellectual éminence grise. The messages of these visions were filled with traditionalist Catholic pushback to the liberalising changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council and alleged a Masonic infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church.
But don’t think that heretical “Catholic” churches don’t have legs. Arianism survived the Council of Nicaea and the fall of Rome. It flourished as the state religion, with its own churches and bishops, across Germanic kingdoms, including the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy, and the Burgundians lived in the Rhineland as well as what is now southern France. The photo is the mosaic ceiling from the ruins of an Arian Church, Ravenna, Italy. Believers numbered in the hundreds of thousands to millions, but these churches died out by the 9th century, without Roman pushback. Still, five or six hundred years is a good run.
Some modern groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, hold theological views similar to Arianism, teaching that Jesus is a created being subordinate to God rather than part of a coequal Trinity. There are approximately 9.2 million active "publishers" across more than 240 countries and territories. The denomination defines membership based strictly on active participation in its formal preaching work, rather than self-identification or simple.
Photograph by Henry Lithgow
Supporters of Smiling Cardinal Raymond Burke include the 13,500-member Sovereign Military Order of Malta, but attendance at his “faithful apostolates” such as Michigan’s Call to Holiness Conference fluctuates wildly.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a worldwide baptised membership of more than 23.6 million people. I included the Seventh-day Adventists because they were founded on William Miller’s prediction that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on October 22, 1844, the biblical Day of Atonement for that year. When that didn’t happen, they called it the "Great Disappointment," and turned their attention to the prophecy of Ellen Gould White, became teetotaling vegetarians, and started to keep the Sabbath. That became a formula for success.
Another American startup, Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist, does not publish its membership numbers. The church's Manual specifically instructs members not to divulge these figures. However, demographic surveys estimate worldwide membership to range from 100,000 to 420,000.
I totally support praying in whatever language a church, a nation, or an individual prefers. The Roman Church seems to concur and would probably support Latin if SSPX didn’t carry so much doctrinal baggage. The Esperanto Eucharistic liturgy (Meso in Esperanto) has been officially approved by the Vatican for use in Catholic churches and has been available since the mid-1990s. Good luck finding a church or a linguistically able priest.
To summarise my research:
SSPX: 500,000 to 1 million
The Old Catholic Church of Utrecht: 58,800 to 115,000
The Palmarian Catholic Church: 500 to 1,500
The Arian Churches between 325 and cc 800 C.E.: several hundred thousand to millions
Jehovah’s Witnesses: 9.2 million
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta: 13,500
The Seventh-day Adventist Church: 23.6 million
The Church of Christ, Scientist: 100,000 to 420,000
Conclusion: for strength in numbers and longevity, have a full Ecumenical Council declare your founder anathema, avoid large real estate investments in Andalucia, and Pope Leo is wasting a lot of time on the SSPX bishop ordination.
But take heart, the seminaries of the SSPX might preserve the correct use of the gerundive (as in quod erat demonstrandum) for several more generations, but as a serious faith movement, they’re toast, a curious anachronism that will die out for lack of fashion sense as long as no one feeds their publicity addiction. That’s what they crave, confusing words with faith, devotion, and prayer.
I know, I can hear someone out there whispering, “Then why did you waste your time writing two pages against SSPX if they’ll be as out of fashion as blue suede shoes in a few years?” Because it was fun.
