I am not an SSPXer, so I have had no first hand knowlege of “the ‘teachings’ of the sspx on the documents of Vatican Council II”.
That said, the parishs in which I have lived for most of the last forty-five years taught me that the documents of Vatican II had:
Outlawed Latin;
Required Communion rails to be removed;
Required standing for Communion;
Required the priest to “face the people” during Mass;
Recommended/required that Traditional Hymns/organ music be discarded in favor of modern contemporary music with guitars, tambourines and pianos;
Required “grip and grin” sessions before and during Mass;
Recommended Communion in the hand;
Recommended that people not kneel at Mass;
Allowed liturgical dancers (or liturgical movement, whatever that is, I am afraid to ask);
and other things too numerous to mention, but you get the idea.
All of these things are BOLD FACED LIES by clerics in communion with their bishops who are in communion with Rome.
And this guy (O’Malley)has the gall to disparage the “caliber of the leadership” of the SSPX folks?
Very well said. I’m also not an SSPXer, but I can’t believe that the Archbishop of Boston has the chutzpah to knock them. His archdiocese has been in free fall for decades (closed churches, closed schools, dwindling vocations, etc.), so one should certainly question that “caliber of leadership” Boston’s Catholics have had, as well. He’s upset that Williamson is a member in good standing of the SSPX? Well, I’m upset that the Kennedys and other pro-abortion politicians of their ilk are members in good standing of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Having lived through the same experience, I can truly empathize with your comments. At no time, however, do I ever recall a pastor teaching this from the pulpit. They simply implemented the changes, some more rapidly than others, over the span of several decades. Like most catholics, I never questioned it until I arrived in this forum and someone challenged me to read the documents of VCII. What you and I have experienced is an interpretation of those documents. They were written to address the needs of catholics worldwide - not just in the US.
None of this has anything to do with the SSPX whose founder chose to dissent with the Council and the authority of the pope. That is the crux of the problem. One might rightly be appreciative to the sspx for retaining the TLM but not their dissent.
Archbishop O’Malley has every right and, indeed, a duty to question the caliber of leadership of the SSPX because the Society has spent the last 40 years rejecting the legitimacy and teachings of an ecumenical council. While modernists have clearly mischaracterized the Second Vatican Council and used it as an excuse to advance their own agenda in the Church, that does NOT excuse the SSPX from its own sins. The fact that Bishop Williamson denies the reality of the Holocaust, which is a historical fact, means that he’s either ignorant (which I doubt) or anti-Semitic. Either way, I would question the theological competence as well as the integrity of someone who refuses to believe the truth.