Short answer
According to the Holy See, yes. After the Society consecrated four bishops without papal mandate on 1 July 2026, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith declared on 2 July that its clergy are in schism and excommunicated. Lay people are counted as schismatic only if they formally adhere to the Society. The SSPX denies being in schism and has appealed.
Updated October 19, 2026
On 1 July 2026, at Écône in Switzerland, bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four priests as bishops without a papal mandate and against the expressed will of Pope Leo XIV. The next day the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published a decree and an explanatory note. The decree states that the two consecrating bishops and the four new bishops incurred automatic excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See. The note goes further: it says the act constituted the canonical crime of schism, that the Society's ordained ministers are in schism and subject to excommunication, and it asks the faithful not to take part in the Society's celebrations.
The note does not declare everyone who attends an SSPX chapel excommunicated. It applies the conditions of a 1996 note of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts: lay people are schismatic and excommunicated only if they formally adhere to the Society, not merely because they attend its Masses.
In 1988, after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal mandate, Pope John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia Dei that such disobedience "constitutes a schismatic act" and warned that "formal adherence to the schism is a grave offence against God." In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of the four bishops, but wrote that "the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers... do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church." In the years that followed, the Holy See described the dispute as above all doctrinal, and Pope Francis made pastoral concessions on confession and marriage. The 2026 documents now state plainly that the Society's clergy are in schism.
The Society has always denied being in schism. It argues that it recognises the Pope and claims no jurisdiction of its own, and that a "state of necessity" justified the consecrations. On 11 July 2026 it lodged a recourse against the decree, which it says suspends it; canonists quoted by America replied that a recourse cannot lift penalties incurred automatically. In October 2026 the Society said its appeal was under way in Rome. Until the Holy See rules otherwise, the 2 July decree and note state the Church's official position.
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