Profiting from Crisis? Catholic Traditionalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract During the COVID -19 pandemic, traditionalist Catholic communities have been able to draw worshippers from mainstream parishes that restricted services, thereby profiting crisis. In addition, they used pandemic conditions advance an ultra-conservative strain of Christian theology foregrounds role believers in Ecclesia militans or “militant Church” by rejecting (in part) state-imposed measures against and propagating a critique vaccination line with decades mobilization abortion secularism. The paper focuses on largest these communities, Priestly Fraternity St. Pius X Peter. Focusing mainly Austria, it details how sought leverage crisis court worshipers their long-term strategic ambitions destabilize post-Second Vatican Council status quo within Roman Church.