James Noel Ward

Ed. Note: On July 1 the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) consecrated four bishops without a pontifical mandate. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991), who founded the traditionalist group in 1970, likewise consecrated four bishops — also without a pontifical mandate — on June 30, 1988, leading to his automatic excommunication and that of the four bishops he consecrated, two of whom are still alive: Bernard Fellay and Alfonso de Galarreta. In 2009 the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops issued a decree remitting the excommunications. Despite a plea from Pope Leo XIV on June 29 to “please turn back!” and reconsider what he called a “schismatic act,” the SSPX proceeded with the consecrations. On July 2 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree announcing the automatic excommunications of the four new bishops, Fellay, and Galarreta. The decree admonishes clerics and laymen “not to adhere to the schism” of the SSPX lest they, too, “ipso facto incur the penalty” of excommunication. James Noel Ward, who traveled from Paris, was the NOR’s man on the ground for the consecration event, which took place at the SSPX campus in Écône, Switzerland. His report follows.

Ed. Note: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the NOR hosted a trio of symposia. We relaunched the format, after more than a 30-year absence, with a two-part Symposium on Catholics & American Political Life in our December 2024 and January-February 2025 issues. The relaunch, we are happy to report, was well received — so much so that an expanded version of that symposium (with additional contributors and lengthier contributions) is now available in book form from Arouca Press, titled Catholics and the American Polity: Approaches and Contestations. In this issue, we revisit the format, which we hope to make an annual feature, with a brand-new topic.

The curious case of Bronze Age Pervert (BAP, for short), of unfortunate name, or “handle,” in his world. Author of the self-published Bronze Age Mindset (2018), BAP is present in 4Chan discussion threads and on YouTube, and he produces weekly subscription-only podcasts with approximately 6,500 paying clients (I am among them). He was banned from Twitter but reinstated in December 2022, and he now has over 100,000 followers. A Google search turns up scores of articles addressing or discussing his work, all written in palatable forms. But BAP’s own subjects and rhetoric are for adults only. Who is BAP, what does he espouse, and what compels the attention of orthodox Catholics?