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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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So? They have respectable numbers, and from what I understand, they're growing.

Maybe-ish.

First off, we don't know how many people go to the SSPX. They probably don't either. I would guess that their average Sunday attendance is 350-400K, based on their claim of a priest/people ratio of 1:500(this number sanity checks off of priest assignments to individual chapels very well). 600,000 is almost certainly an overestimate; even the SSPX admits this.

Growing isn't clear. We know that when the tradcath community in a given area is growing, the SSPX is usually part of that growth... but usually slower than regular union chapels. Nobody really disputes that pre-July '26 they were growing, but the sources of that growth are in strong dispute(high fertility vs adults joining). It's not clear whether the growth trend has continued- there's plenty of evidence that it has at least curbed.

One thing that is worth saying is that the SSPX leadership is not the same group as the bishops. Yes, this is weird, but they're led by a priest, not a bishop, elected by the general chapter(also of priests, not bishops). This is probably an intentional move to make their canonical status less clearly schismatic. The SSPX is also poor by tradcath standards; SSPX bishops and senior priests would make significantly more money if they joined a regular diocese. Typically in areas with multiple TLM options, the SSPX one has the lowest average income among the attendees. The SSPX as an institution also faces real financial constraints and regularly has to shelve projects due to funding(the FSSP almost never does this- they will raise the money for things they genuinely need to do. The ICRSS raises the money a bit faster. The diocese would just take on debt).