weakest of the Council.” Rather than improve it, most Council Fathers preferred approving it as is and moving on to more important matters. Some 25% of the Council Fathers voted against it to express their disappointment. Traditionalist groups rejecting the Council Various traditionalist Catholic groups rejecting the validity of the Council arose starting from the 1970s. The largest one is the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which recognises the authority of the Pope but rejects the validity of the Second Vatican Council. The SSPX was excommunicated in 1988 by Pope John Paul II, but the excommunication was lifted in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI; despite this, they are not in full communion with the Holy See and their sacraments are considered to be licit only with approvation of the Holy See. Other, more radical groups have gone further than the SSPX and have declared that the Holy See has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII (sedevacantism) or that all the Pontiffs since Pope John XXIII are popes materially but not formally (sedeprivationism). The most notable of these groups are the Society of Saint Pius V, the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen and the Institute Mater Boni Consilii. Authority of the Council The 1917 Code of Canon Law, in force in the Latin Church at the time of the council, stated: "An Ecumenical Council enjoys supreme power over the universal Church." The issue of the authority of Vatican II was addressed by Pope Paul VI five weeks after the end of the Council in the talk he gave at his general audience of 12 January 1966: There are those who ask what is the authority, the theological qualification, that the Council wished to attribute to its teachings, knowing that it avoided giving solemn dogmatic definitions engaging the infallibility of the ecclesiastical magisterium. And the answer is known to those who recall the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964: given the pastoral character of the Council, it avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary way dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility; but it nevertheless endowed its teachings with the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium, and this ordinary -- and obviously authentic -- magisterium must be accepted docilely and sincerely by all the faithful, according to the mind of the Council regarding the nature and purposes of the individual documents. The 1983 Code of