The Priest, the Mission Field and the Mass: A Reply to Kevin Wells
Kevin Wells asks an SSPX priest to leave the Society and carry traditional priesthood into the post-conciliar parish system. His appeal is sincere and often moving, but it mistakes the preservation of Catholic tradition for pastoral retreat, treats canonical regularity as though it guaranteed apostolic freedom, and turns St John Vianney into an argument against the very liturgical and doctrinal inheritance by which the Curé of Ars was formed.
Kevin Wells begins his open letter to an unnamed priest of the Society of Saint Pius X with a page of handwritten condolences. The priest had written after a bereavement in Wells’s family, expressing the hope that sorrow might prepare his daughter to become the mother of a priest:
“I can not help but wonder, and hope, that Our Blessed Lord is attentively forging your daughter’s heart into that of a mother of a priest. Such hearts are rare pearls of great price, for they never withhold their Fiat even as the swords of sorrow run them through, and thus they continue the song of the Mother of all priests.”
Wells was sufficiently moved to frame the letter. He had also been told something decisive about its author: this was a priest who “cares only for souls”.
The tribute is generous, and Wells’s affection for the priesthood is unmistakable. He writes with genuine admiration for St John Vianney and Venerable Aloysius Schwartz, priests who accepted exhaustion, humiliation and physical suffering for the conversion of sinners. His governing concern is the cura animarum, the care of souls, which St Gregory the Great called “the art of arts”. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of that concern.
Yet the appeal built upon it is profoundly mistaken. Wells asks this priest to leave the Society, submit himself to the post-conciliar ecclesiastical system, and take the traditional priestly spirit into parishes whose people have been deprived of sound catechesis, reverent worship and supernatural preaching. The proposal sounds heroic because Wells presents the Society chapel as a sanctuary of incense, lace, calligraphy and well-behaved families, while the diocesan parish contains the abandoned, the addicted and the spiritually starved.
His central question is blunt:
“Father, will you leave the SSPX?”
The argument which follows depends upon a contrast between two kinds of priestly life. One priest remains among Catholics who already possess the Faith; the other goes out to rescue those who are losing it. Wells presses the distinction repeatedly:
“Father, where is the sacrifice in shepherding to heaven the soul of a woman who wears a chapel veil and prays the Rosary every day? Where is the immolation and hard work in leading to Heaven a serious-minded man who delights in discussing Thomistic philosophy with you? Does the well-ordered, homeschooled child require your pastoral care as much as the blank-faced, porn-addicted teenager shuttled between divorced parents?”
That contrast is eloquent. It is also false.
Wells concedes almost the whole Society diagnosis before rejecting its practical conclusion. He writes that the cura animarum “seems to have been mostly forsaken on the Novus Ordo side of the Roman Catholic Church”. He describes a Church in which priests “see the horror of their priestly brethrens’ identity becoming slowly deformed by a Church that now appeases the world rather than confronting it”.
His language regarding recent ecclesiastical developments is still more severe:
“I don’t know you, but I can guess that you, like me, regard the Synod on Synodality and Fiducia Supplicans as modern Church initiatives that spew vomit onto Christ’s Face and injects Luciferian light into His already long-ailing Bride.”
He describes modern parishes as places where Catholics are compelled to draw from “horrid CCD programs, uninspired Masses, watered-down preaching” and “defective synodal blueprints”. He speaks of “millions of spiritually-starved postconciliar Mass-goers” and of bishops who have “thinned their flock and expedited the biblical-like exodus of youth in their parishes”.
He therefore accepts that the sickness is grave, widespread and deeply embedded in the structures to which he invites this priest to submit. What he does not explain is why submission to those structures would free the priest to cure it.
A Society priest who leaves his community does not step into an open mission field carrying his missal, catechism and apostolic liberty. He places himself beneath a diocesan ordinary who may allow the traditional Roman Mass, restrict it, confine it to an inconvenient hour, remove it when personnel change, or forbid it altogether. He may be required to celebrate or concelebrate the reformed rites. His preaching, catechesis, sacramental discipline and public criticism of episcopal policy will remain subject to authority. The bishop may be courageous and sympathetic. He may also be committed to precisely the synodal programme Wells regards as ruinous.
Wells acknowledges the difficulty, but treats it chiefly as a test of humility:
“Because the natural reaction to what we perceive as revolting is to recoil and withdraw, I understand why the thought of presiding over the Sacrifice of the Mass versus populum might disturb you. But I don’t care about your feelings.”
The problem is not the priest’s feelings. It is whether the conditions of diocesan ministry would permit him to preserve and transmit the Catholic inheritance Wells praises. Since Traditionis custodes, traditional priests in canonically recognised communities have learned how quickly an apostolate may be curtailed by administrative decree. The permission granted today may be withdrawn tomorrow. A priest who enters such a structure does not necessarily bring the traditional apostolate to the ordinary parish. He may instead surrender the practical conditions under which that apostolate can continue.
Wells asks the priest to take what he calls a “gamble”. The souls already entrusted to him would bear much of its cost.
His portrait of Society life is equally misleading. Wells suggests that priests of the Society may have found what he calls a “Pilate out-clause”:
“There lies a temptation within the SSPX—what I might call a ‘Pilate out-clause’—whereby the priests of your Society have found a way to wash their hands of the world’s moral pus and retreat into their palace of comfort—while Christ is left to die and the souls He came to save live in a world covered over by unseen, flapping black wings.”
This is the most serious charge in the article, and the least substantiated.
The ordinary SSPX priest does not spend his days discussing Thomistic refinements with cultivated men before processing through clouds of incense. He offers Mass, hears confessions, teaches catechism, prepares couples for marriage, instructs converts, visits the sick, buries the dead, directs retreats, forms servers, administers schools and travels considerable distances between missions. Many work in countries where Catholic infrastructure is sparse and material conditions are poor. The Society’s published figures for November 2025 recorded 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 brothers, 88 oblates and 250 sisters representing fifty nationalities. Its clergy and religious serve across scores of countries.¹
These numbers do not settle the Society’s canonical or doctrinal disputes with Rome. They do, however, dispose of the suggestion that its apostolate consists principally in maintaining comfortable enclaves for the already devout. A seminary with hundreds of candidates is not a refuge from the crisis of priesthood. A worldwide network of missions, schools, chapels and retreat houses is not a withdrawal from the care of souls. One may contest the canonical basis upon which the work proceeds; it is harder to deny that the work exists.
The opposition Wells constructs between the veiled woman who says her Rosary and the porn-addicted adolescent shuttled between divorced parents is especially unfortunate. The first does not cease to require a shepherd because she has acquired habits of devotion. She may be raising children against the pressure of an entire culture. She may be struggling to preserve a marriage, keep the Faith in her home, resist despair, care for elderly parents or repair the damage of earlier years. Her veil is not proof that salvation has become effortless.
Nor did her family’s apparent order arise without priestly labour. The serious Catholic household that Wells treats as the easier assignment may be the fruit of years of preaching, confession, correction, sacramental discipline and sacrifice. A priest does not neglect the lost by preventing those already recovered from being lost again.
Wells asks:
“Does the well-ordered, homeschooled child require your pastoral care as much as the blank-faced, porn-addicted teenager shuttled between divorced parents?”
The answer is that both require it, though not in the same way. The one needs rescue from immediate ruin; the other needs formation sufficient to withstand the world which produced that ruin. A priest who ministers only after collapse has occurred is not more sacrificial than the priest who labours to prevent it.
The adolescent Wells describes also needs more than the mere presence of a generous priest. He needs the truth about chastity, sin, grace, authority, penance, marriage and the purpose of human life. His divorced parents may need doctrines they would rather not hear. The parish may need a sacramental discipline its leadership is unwilling to enforce. The priest who enters that setting without the freedom to preach, worship and govern according to the traditional Catholic understanding may soon discover that compassion is permitted only so long as it does not challenge the principles that produced the disorder.
Wells deals too quickly with the events of 1 July 2026. He praises the Society’s resistance in one sentence and condemns it in the next:
“Although I am heartened by SSPX bishops fighting to bring the Church back to its traditions, supernatural identity, and time-tested sacred remedies, reason prevails; their decision to disregard Peter’s authority and defiantly press on with the ordinations was an act deserving of excommunication.”
But the words “reason prevails” do not constitute an argument.
A complete canonical analysis must distinguish the illicit consecration itself from the separate delict of schism; the external violation of a penal law from the imputability of those involved; the existence of necessity from the legitimacy of a particular judgement concerning necessity; and an irregular canonical condition from complete separation from the Church. It must also address the effects of canons 1323 and 1324, the precise wording and juridical reach of the decree issued after the consecrations, and the legal weight of the explanatory note accompanying it.
One may conclude, after considering those questions, that the bishops erred. One may regard their judgement of necessity as mistaken or their action as disproportionate. What one may not do is replace the missing analysis with the phrase “reason prevails”.
Wells’s claim that the Society has rejected Peter is equally imprecise. The Society recognises Leo XIV as Pope, prays publicly for him and professes the doctrine of papal primacy. Its argument is not that the Roman Pontiff lacks authority, but that a particular command may be resisted when obedience appears to threaten the preservation of the Faith and the continuation of traditional priestly life.
That conclusion may be contested. It cannot honestly be described as simple rejection of Peter.
Catholic theology has always distinguished the divine constitution of papal authority from the prudence, justice or lawfulness of every particular administrative act. To resist a command is not necessarily to deny the office from which it comes. The distinction is indispensable, especially when Wells himself denounces the policies, documents and pastoral direction of contemporary Church authorities in terms more severe than those used by many Society priests.
Wells’s claim that an SSPX priest is “outside” the Church is similarly broader than the evidence allows. He ends his appeal by asking:
“And Father, how can you help the Church when you are outside of it?”
Yet Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2009 that the Society possessed no canonical status in the Church and that its ministers did not licitly exercise ministry. He carefully distinguished that juridical condition from the doctrinal questions that prevented full regularisation.² That is grave language, but it is not identical to saying that every priest and faithful Catholic associated with the Society has ceased to belong to the Catholic Church.
The conduct of the Holy See before the 2026 consecrations confirmed the complexity. Pope Francis granted Society priests the faculty to hear confessions validly and licitly, later providing mechanisms by which marriages involving Society faithful could be celebrated with the necessary delegation.³ Rome continued doctrinal and canonical discussions with the Society. Such measures did not regularise it, but neither do they fit Wells’s simple division between priests “inside” the Church and priests beyond it.
Excommunication itself does not erase baptism or convert a Catholic automatically into a non-Christian. It is a medicinal ecclesiastical penalty with defined juridical effects. Schism, excommunication, lack of canonical mission, suspension, illicit ministry and invalid sacramental action are related questions, but they are not interchangeable expressions. A serious appeal to an SSPX priest ought not to blur them.
The use of St John Vianney introduces a different confusion. Wells repeatedly depreciates the priestly instruments by which Vianney himself was formed. He writes:
“Father, Catholic-dead France didn’t need a Latinist or headman, and neither does Catholic-dying America. The lambs of the crumbling West need Victims.”
Elsewhere he states:
“Lace and maniples and incense and calligraphy—so beautiful and moving to my mortal soul—mean little to God when His Son enacted the Great Commission for you and I to help save a broken world.”
The Curé of Ars cannot bear the weight of this argument.
Vianney struggled academically, particularly with Latin, after growing up during the destruction of Catholic education by the French Revolution. Abbé Charles Balley recognised his piety and perseverance, tutored him, and helped him continue towards ordination. Vianney was ordained in 1815 and appointed to Ars in 1818, where he found a small population marked by religious ignorance and indifference.⁴
That history proves the importance of patient formation. It does not prove that formation is expendable.
Vianney’s apostolate was intensely sacramental and doctrinal. He restored Sunday observance, preached against blasphemy, drunkenness and sexual immorality, insisted upon repentance, refused absolution when amendment was absent, fostered Eucharistic devotion and spent extraordinary hours in the confessional. The man who drew France to Ars was not successful because he treated inherited Catholic forms as impediments to evangelisation. He converted his parish by living them with frightening seriousness.
The Latin which cost him so much effort was the language in which he offered the Holy Sacrifice. The doctrine he struggled to learn gave content to his preaching and judgement in the confessional. The traditional rites ordered the sacramental life by which Ars was restored. Vianney’s limitations magnify the operation of grace; they do not turn ignorance into an apostolic ideal.
Wells asks:
“What good are statues of martyrs and portraits of Our Lady—or for that matter, Latin-chanted prayers to St. Michael the Archangel—if your share of the trench warfare is avoided?”
The answer is that these things are not substitutes for trench warfare. They are among the means by which priests and faithful are trained for it.
The maniple signifies labour, sorrow and the reward promised to the priest who goes weeping to sow. Incense is offered because divine worship concerns God before it concerns the preferences of a congregation. Sacred images teach the Incarnation and the communion of saints. Liturgical discipline trains priest and people to receive what belongs to the Church rather than invent what suits themselves.
None of these things absolves a priest from feeding the hungry, visiting the sick or seeking the sinner. They tell him who he is, whom he serves and what power can save the sinner when he finds him.
The juxtaposition of “blood” and “incense” near the end of Wells’s letter therefore exposes the deeper error. He asks whether the priest would rather go down:
“smelling of blood than of incense”
Catholic worship does not offer a choice between them. Incense rises over the Blood of the Sacrifice. The priest at the altar is not escaping victimhood; he stands sacramentally in the person of the Victim. A priest who preserves the Roman Mass in its inherited form is not choosing aesthetic consolation over Calvary. He is guarding the rite which most unmistakably teaches him that his priesthood belongs to the Cross.
Venerable Aloysius Schwartz does not support the proposed opposition either. Wells writes that Schwartz “knew the old Mass was superior”, but that he was “too busy to complain” about the stripping away of its beauty. He concludes:
“Korea’s lepers, orphans, and abandoned needed a victim—not a Latinist.”
Yet Schwartz’s service to orphans, the sick and the destitute was inseparable from his prayer, penance, Marian devotion and attachment to traditional Catholic worship. His corporal apostolate did not render liturgical fidelity irrelevant. It arose from a life ordered towards sacrifice. The proper conclusion is not that the old Mass matters less when bodies are wounded, but that sustained supernatural labour becomes impossible when the priest ceases to draw life from the altar.
Wells is right that traditional Catholics must not become self-protective, complacent or indifferent to those beyond their chapels. Every community faces that temptation. Catholics who possess sound liturgy and doctrine can turn gifts into badges of superiority. Priests may become so occupied with maintaining institutions that active evangelisation weakens. These dangers should be named and resisted wherever they occur.
But Wells does not merely call the Society to a wider missionary zeal. He asks a priest to abandon it for an ecclesiastical environment he himself describes as spiritually devastating. He assumes that submission to ordinary structures would release the priest into heroic service, without reckoning with the possibility that those structures would restrict his Mass, qualify his preaching, disperse his congregation and neutralise his apostolate.
He asks the priest to imagine “waking before dawn each day knowing souls needed you”. Yet Society priests already wake knowing that souls need them. They hear the confessions of the devout and the fallen, instruct converts, reconcile marriages, form seminarians, teach children and carry the sacraments to missions neglected by ordinary structures. Their work is not rendered less sacrificial because the chapel contains incense or because the faithful kneel at an altar rail.
The Catholic crisis cannot be remedied by transferring priests individually from institutions that preserve tradition into institutions often organised around its suppression. Nor will spiritually hungry Catholics be saved by forcing priests to choose between canonical security and the unrestricted profession of what they believe the Church has always taught.
The real dispute is not between comfortable traditionalism and sacrificial mission. It concerns the conditions under which Catholic mission remains possible. The Society’s answer may be judged canonically irregular, historically contingent and susceptible to its own dangers. It cannot honestly be reduced to cowardice before the world.
The unnamed priest’s calligraphy moved Wells because it revealed spiritual fatherhood. The letter spoke of sorrow, vocation, sacrifice and the possibility that one family’s grief might be joined to the making of a priest. That priest did not learn such things in spite of the formation he received. He learned them through it.
Wells asks him to leave because the wider vineyard is desolate. A shepherd may indeed be sent into desolation. Before urging him to depart, however, one must establish that he will be permitted to carry his staff, preach the whole truth and offer the sacrifice by which his priesthood was formed. Otherwise the invitation is not to enter the battlefield with stronger weapons.
It is to surrender them at the gate.
¹ Society of Saint Pius X, “SSPX Statistics 2025”, figures as at 1 November 2025.
² Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, 10 March 2009.
³ Francis, Apostolic Letter Misericordia et misera, 20 November 2016, no. 12; Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, letter concerning faculties for marriages of faithful who follow the pastoral activity of the Society of Saint Pius X, 27 March 2017.
⁴ Francis Trochu, The Curé d’Ars; Susan Tracy Otten, “St Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VIII.
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