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 .

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,
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00:21:15.020 and the promise of the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.
00:21:19.060 Join Catholic prophecy experts Father Paul Kramer,
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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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