The John-Henry Westen Show - July 08, 2026


Fulton Sheen SSPX Letter？ Leo XIV’s new LGBT Bishop + Why Abortion Is Treated Lighter Than SSPX


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

142.84

Word count

3,093

Sentence count

164

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Why does the Vatican treat the Society of St. Pius X (SPX) as a lesser crime than abortion? Is it because they were founded by Bishop Fulton Sheen, who is about to be canonized?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Isn't it weird that the Vatican seems to be treating the SSPX adherents as a worse canonical
00:00:08.140 crime than even abortion? Hey my friends, have you heard of this SSPX letter that's
00:00:16.860 circulating apparently by Bishop Fulton Sheen, who's about to be beatified in September,
00:00:22.500 condemning the sspx we're going to get into that also today july 7th pope leo the 14th has made
00:00:31.820 a new bishop an lgbt radical in germany into a bishop i just got an email in the mail or actually
00:00:40.640 a text saying why is abortion treated lighter than the sspx in terms of excommunication i looked into
00:00:48.220 it, oh my, you're going to want to hear what I found out. But let's begin as we always do with
00:00:54.280 the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:00.160 So first of all, today, July the 7th, 2026, Leo the 14th appointed a new bishop of Eichstadt in
00:01:07.840 Germany, who is another James Martin SJ. In other words, opposed to the Catholic teaching on
00:01:14.680 homosexuality, but nevertheless elevated to a bishop of a diocese rather than excommunicated.
00:01:22.860 His name is Monsignor Christian Wirtz. He's 55-year-old and is bishop of Eichstadt in Germany
00:01:29.560 now. Our friends over at Gloria TV report today that in September of 2022, Monsignor Wirtz voted
00:01:37.600 yes at the German synodal wave for the controversial document on the doctrinal
00:01:42.160 reassessment of homosexuality. The document argued that homosexual orientation is not
00:01:48.200 self-chosen and cannot be changed, and that homosexual Catholics should be accepted without
00:01:53.860 reservation. He also voted yes for the document dealing with gender diversity, which asked 0.79
00:02:01.360 bishops to ensure that transgender and intersex people could live in the church, and I quote,
00:02:07.400 without hostility and without discrimination, end quote. The document encouraged dioceses to revise
00:02:13.420 practical matters such as church registers and pastoral procedures so they could accommodate
00:02:18.800 gender diversity. Six months later, in March of 2023, this now new bishop by Pope Leo also voted
00:02:27.720 in favor of the document Blessing Ceremonies for Couples Who Love Each Other, which proposed the
00:02:34.100 official introduction of formal blessings, ceremonies for homosexual and remarried and
00:02:39.420 divorced couples, which is the very one the Vatican said they couldn't do. Nonetheless,
00:02:45.900 no punishment for that, but elevation to being bishop of a diocese. So let's get on now to this
00:02:53.640 Sheen letter. There's a Sheen letter circulating all over the internet now with regard to the
00:03:00.160 Society, St. Pius X. Bishop Sheen apparently wrote this letter to a woman named Barbara telling her
00:03:05.880 not to go to the SSPX chapels for masses and whatnot. Is this even real at all? Well, I can
00:03:15.100 tell you that at the time the SSPX's own magazine, The Angelus, published the letter in full in
00:03:23.020 November of 1978, and they also published a detailed rebuttal by Dr. Eugene McKenzie,
00:03:29.980 who had received a copy of the letter. The recipient, Barbara, confirmed that she still
00:03:35.840 holds the original letter with Sheen's signature and coat of arms and says it's real. There's some
00:03:40.960 really strange things. Let me go through a few of them. First of all, the letter accuses the SSPX
00:03:48.100 of leading to schism and even heresy. So that's weird because the date of the letter is September
00:03:55.460 1978. For all of us, we might think, oh, the SSPX, well, they're in schism and heresy.
00:04:01.980 Well, not in 1978. First of all, while they might've been in a canonically irregular situation,
00:04:10.880 Remember, the excommunications and things like that only happened in 1988, a decade later.
00:04:19.120 The society was actually formed with permission.
00:04:23.960 Sure, there were serious warnings from Paul VI to Lefebvre when he was doing things that
00:04:30.320 Paul VI didn't like, but there was no declaration of schism at that time at all.
00:04:35.640 That only came in 1988, a full decade after this letter is written.
00:04:41.420 And that was after the consecrations of new bishops, four bishops at the time, when the
00:04:47.060 Vatican said they could only do one.
00:04:49.060 But the very fact that John Paul II said they could do one in the first place shows us,
00:04:56.080 wait a minute, they can't be in schism.
00:04:58.880 So Bishop Sheen saying they're leading to schism and heresy, the charge of heresy, by
00:05:04.300 the way, that's never come up.
00:05:05.640 So that's suspect right there.
00:05:08.600 There's another thing, though.
00:05:10.320 The letter says the changes made by,
00:05:13.700 now with reference to the Mass,
00:05:15.300 they're talking about now the Novus Ordo Mass.
00:05:18.380 So in the changes it says,
00:05:20.800 I mean, in the letter it says, and I quote,
00:05:22.360 the changes made by Pope Paul VI
00:05:24.860 were not doctrinal changes.
00:05:27.020 They merely changed from Latin to the vernacular, end quote.
00:05:31.920 Bishop Sheen would have known,
00:05:33.160 since he always said the Latin Mass, by the way, that this part of the letter is factually
00:05:40.660 incorrect. The Novus Ordo involved many more changes than just the language. It removed
00:05:48.880 or revised certain prayers that dated from apostolic times, and it also eliminated other
00:05:57.320 traditional elements of the Mass. We all know that there's new offertory prayers. There's multiple
00:06:03.980 new Eucharistic prayers instead of the Roman canon, canon number one as it's called now.
00:06:09.700 And there's also changes to the Missal itself, readings and prayers and rubrics. So when it says
00:06:18.280 that that's all it changed was the language, that's a patent falsehood, which Bishop Sheen
00:06:24.880 would have known. So you wonder, hmm, that's really weird. Maybe you can chalk it up to
00:06:31.660 Bishop Sheen's health, because in September 1978, he was already dying. So first of all,
00:06:39.380 he had major open heart surgery in July of 1977. In fact, he was the oldest person at the time to
00:06:47.560 undergo such a surgery. He had additional health complications after the surgery. And in September
00:06:55.080 78, the same month as the letter, he returned to the hospital and was largely confined for months
00:07:01.380 afterward. Biographies describe him as being, and I quote, flat on his back due to heart issues.
00:07:08.660 Also, you should know that Bishop Sheen had many, many ghost writers, staff who wrote letters for
00:07:17.220 him. Why? Well, because in the day when he was extremely popular, he had thousands and thousands
00:07:25.080 of letters each and every day. There was absolutely no way for him to respond. So we all know he had
00:07:34.560 ghostwriters writing for him. And that was throughout his career because of the enormous
00:07:41.300 amounts of mail, but he also had staff who handled correspondence. And it was a standard practice
00:07:48.320 for public figures like him to have assistants do this, especially when he was very ill,
00:07:56.420 as we just heard. This is probably what leads to this letter, which is now circulating.
00:08:03.640 the sheen experts that i've spoken to don't believe that this letter is actually sheen
00:08:11.340 and by the way traditional societies tlm societies including the sspx are all very friendly with
00:08:19.660 sheen quoting him extensively on their own websites there's another issue that happened
00:08:24.340 one of our readers uh and a good friend of mine wrote texted me saying hey isn't it weird that
00:08:31.660 the Vatican seems to be treating the SSPX adherence or adherence to the SSPX as a worse
00:08:40.200 canonical crime than even abortion. She said, well, if you confess an abortion, a diocesan priest
00:08:47.080 has the faculties to absolve and lift the automatic excommunication that comes with doing
00:08:53.240 an abortion. If you confess adherence to the SSPX, on the other hand, according to the documents just
00:08:59.440 put out by the Vatican, your priest can't help you. Your bishop has to be the one to lift the
00:09:05.320 excommunication, and the person has to sign something promising never to do it again, not
00:09:12.140 to go to the SSPX in the future, unlike with abortion, where the penitent does not need to
00:09:18.220 sign a document saying that they will never commit an abortion again to have the excommunication
00:09:23.300 lifted. Let me break this down. Abortion, procuring a completed abortion, incurs an automatic
00:09:30.980 laitessentiae, they call it excommunication. That's Canon 1397, section two, if you're going
00:09:36.980 to look for it. Pope Francis, however, changed that in 2015-2016 Jubilee of Mercy, and it was
00:09:43.360 made permanent afterward, by the way, that any priest with faculties to hear confession can
00:09:47.740 validly absolve the sin of an abortion and lift the excommunication. There is no longer a general
00:09:53.800 reservation requiring the bishop, except in very specific cases, to lift those excommunications
00:10:00.060 from abortions. The penitent must have contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, which is standard
00:10:07.320 for any confession to be valid, by the way, but there's no requirement to sign a written document
00:10:12.940 promising never to do it again. So now we go to adherence to the SSPX, which is formal adherence,
00:10:21.100 says the note from the Vatican, from Tucci Fernandez's Dicastri, says that formal adherence
00:10:28.520 to the SSPX, as defined in Ecclesia Dei and clarified later in other documents from the
00:10:35.860 Vatican means also that same automatic excommunication, lai tessentiae. After the July 2026
00:10:44.220 consecrations that the SSPX did, the Vatican explicitly declared the SSPX in schism,
00:10:50.840 warning that clerics and lay people who formally adhere incur this lai tessentiae excommunication.
00:10:57.320 So what do they have to do to get back into the good graces, as it were, of Leo XVI of the church,
00:11:04.960 be not excommunicated well they have a process for that and weirdly it's much more severe than
00:11:13.160 for those who commit an abortion so what is it well the dicastery of the doctrine of faith
00:11:18.440 guidelines issued just a few days ago say lay people who have formerly adhered must present
00:11:24.640 a signed profession of faith and a formula of adherence to their diocesan bishop the bishop
00:11:32.080 then receives them into full communion. And there might be a formal rite attached to that.
00:11:38.260 The formula of adherence includes promises of fidelity to the Pope and the magisterium,
00:11:45.060 acceptance of Vatican II, and a commitment not to publicly oppose the Pope on his teachings.
00:11:51.960 It actually gets even more severe for priests. But for this example, let's just keep it to
00:11:57.180 abortion and the laity, because that's unreal. It is much more severe for those who formally
00:12:07.140 adhere to the SSPX to have those supposed excommunications lifted than it is for the
00:12:12.960 automatic excommunication of those who commit an abortion. There's lots there to unpack. But
00:12:18.820 one of the articles that we have up at LifeSite shows that official Catholic teaching tells us
00:12:25.040 that a heretic cannot excommunicate a catholic saint robert bellarman cites pope saint celestine's
00:12:33.480 text in support of this thesis he says and i quote the holy fathers teach unanimously not only that
00:12:40.600 heretics are outside the church but also that they are ipso facto deprived of all ecclesiastical
00:12:46.740 jurisdiction and dignity it gets better pope alexander ii writing to a bishop enshrined in
00:12:53.800 Canon Auduvimius in Gratian, if you're looking for it, that's the document. He says this,
00:12:59.680 an excommunicated person cannot excommunicate another. And then he goes on to explain, he said,
00:13:06.480 we, hence the Pope in the sort of traditional we plural form, we have heard that Henry,
00:13:12.760 called Archbishop of Ravenna, has attempted to excommunicate you. But since being excommunicated,
00:13:18.720 he could not excommunicate you by apostolic authority. We command you, absolving you and
00:13:24.740 your people never to trouble yourselves about it, end quote. So there's that. And if you want to
00:13:31.380 look at the record of Pope Leo, let alone Tutra Fernandez, you'll see that the argument to say
00:13:39.260 their heretics is not very difficult to make. LifeSite News is thrilled to announce our annual
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00:14:41.680 And see you in November.
00:14:43.400 There was another observation I wanted to give you.
00:14:45.920 When I was in Econ covering the bishops' consecrations,
00:14:51.440 I told you on a previous show that I was able just to see
00:14:55.560 the absolute Catholicism of the more than 20,000 pilgrims who were there.
00:15:01.520 It was just beautiful to see.
00:15:03.800 There's one thing I failed to mention.
00:15:05.820 I was very, very busy, as you might imagine,
00:15:09.100 running around doing interviews, lots of people that I spoke to.
00:15:12.680 When I got to the little bookshop, which they were selling the commemorative coins,
00:15:19.000 they, not surprising, were out of them.
00:15:22.420 And I was going around saying, hey, where are they?
00:15:24.940 And they were gone.
00:15:26.220 And so I was like, oh, okay, that's too bad.
00:15:28.760 So as I was leaving, a guy says to me, here, I got a few of them.
00:15:34.580 You can have one.
00:15:35.520 And I was really moved.
00:15:36.520 I offered to pay him for it.
00:15:37.960 He said, no, no, no, just have it.
00:15:39.860 You might think, oh, maybe he recognized you.
00:15:41.940 actually he didn't I got his name the name is Frank the reason why I know he didn't recognize
00:15:47.820 me is because a few minutes later he ran up and he said his wife sort of nudged him and said that
00:15:54.600 was John Hunter Weston from LifeSite so he then recognized me but the point was some random guy
00:15:59.740 some random stranger comes up and you've paid for something that you know is very valuable
00:16:05.060 and you just give it to them. That kind of generosity is very beautiful. It's very
00:16:13.660 touching. It shows the Catholicity of these people. Lastly, I wanted to tell you about
00:16:20.480 this conversation I had with a priest over there. He was one of the priests of the society. He had
00:16:27.700 though many, many friends among the priests of the fraternity of St. Peter. And there's lots of
00:16:34.160 contention right now with the fraternity and the society and so on and so forth. But he said
00:16:39.180 something I thought very important. He noted that traditional priests, meaning the society priests,
00:16:48.340 fraternity priests, the Institute of Christ, the King priests, different orders that offer the
00:16:53.980 traditional mass exclusively. He said, those priests need to have bishops. Because you know
00:17:02.680 what? The fraternity doesn't have bishops. The Institute of Christ is King. They don't have
00:17:06.480 bishops. They are beholden to the diocesan bishop. And the priest stressed to me what a problem that
00:17:13.980 is. Because, well, the bishop is the one that gives you faculties, as it were, to hear confessions in
00:17:20.900 your diocese. The bishop is the one that gives you the chrism oil to do your blessings. The bishop
00:17:28.480 is the one that has to do your confirmations, or at least give you as a priest the permission to
00:17:35.360 do them in his stead. How's that going to work for a bishop hostile to tradition? It's not.
00:17:43.960 You need bishops. And then you can prove that case very plain and simple. The fraternity of
00:17:53.960 St. Peter, the ones who now say they're the only ones, along with the Institute, who can
00:18:00.300 legitimately offer the mass in Latin, et cetera, the faithful don't have access to them all the
00:18:07.080 time. Why? Because of these very bishops. So the Archdiocese of Guadalajara in Mexico in 2021,
00:18:14.520 Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega suppressed the fraternity, their parish of Our Lady of the
00:18:22.220 pillar that had existed since 2008. With their thriving community of Latin Mass Catholics,
00:18:29.320 he just banned them. He also restricted the number of traditional Latin Mass celebrations
00:18:35.460 anywhere in his diocese, and he banned public masses at the fraternity's pastoral house as well.
00:18:42.800 The Archdiocese of Dijon in France in 2021, Archbishop Roland Minerath expelled the fraternity
00:18:49.100 from the basilica of Fontaine-le-Dijon after 23 years of service there. The traditional Latin 0.85
00:18:56.380 mass was, you know, transferred to a diocesan priest. The stated reason was that, you know,
00:19:03.180 organizational logistical reasons, but everybody knows the fraternity are the ones who do the
00:19:09.680 Latin mass and without them, well, guess what? They're already restricted into non-existence.
00:19:15.580 Then there's the Diocese of Valence in France, which in 2025, Bishop François Durand removed
00:19:22.100 the fraternity from their apostolate in the whole diocese and limited their presence in another
00:19:28.800 diocese as well of Montelimire. So what do we do? You know, there's lots of these examples.
00:19:37.520 And yeah, we can't forget to mention Tyler, Texas, where our own beloved Bishop Joseph
00:19:42.020 Strickland was removed by Francis and Leo. Because remember, Leo at the time was the head
00:19:49.480 of the congregation for bishops, and he worked in tandem with Pope Francis to remove Bishop
00:19:56.780 Strickland. And guess what? When he was removed, they banned the traditional Latin mass from the
00:20:04.020 cathedral where Bishop Strickland had it. That's it. So yes, they are beholden to bishops.
00:20:12.020 And yes, the argument that traditional Latin mass priests need bishops is a very powerful
00:20:18.920 one.
00:20:19.800 The fraternity, the institute, they have no bishops.
00:20:24.580 And so the argument of necessity by the society certainly seems to stand.
00:20:32.460 Please pray for the church.
00:20:33.940 For LifeSite News and Sound of the Cross Media, I'm John Henry Weston.
00:20:37.580 May God bless you.
00:20:42.020 In 1917, Our Lady came to three shepherd children with a dire warning.
00:20:49.100 Now, as darkness spreads across the world and even within the Church,
00:20:53.700 her warning is being fulfilled,
00:20:55.720 so faithful Catholics are gathering in Fatima to answer Heaven's call.
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00:21:15.020 and the promise of the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.
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00:21:32.420 This is not a time for fear.
00:21:34.420 It's a time to storm Heaven.
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