[Antoninus]

The FSSP has a beautiful church and a growing parish in the greater Denver area; I imagine the local SSPX chapter has lost members to it.

I think the plan was to attract as many parishioners to the FSSP parish, starve the the SSPX parish, and then at some point in the future, shut down the FSSP parish as well and leave "those awful traditional Catholics" no place to go. It was a plan of ghettoization. But it hasn't worked and won't work for one reason. The Holy Spirit. Tradition is attractive and both FSSP and SSPX parishes continue grow while the NO parishes starve and wither. The 1960s radicals are becoming increasingly desperate to rescue their failing revolution as they head toward their eternal Day of Reckoning.

[Captain Walker]

I think you might be on to something.

From what I have heard, a bishop with an SSPX presence in his diocese will often encourage the FSSP or ICKSP to open a church in order to siphon members from the SSPX. (Apparently, lay people are quite willing to leave an SSPX parish although outside of the original group who left at the time the FSSP was founded, none of the SSPX's ordained clergy has taken this step.)

Whether this is part of a greater plan to eventually close the doors on the FSSP or IKSP, I really don't know. While we tend to paint the Catholic hierarchy in this country with a pretty broad brush, there are bishops who have been quite supportive of their Latin Mass communities, and have really left them alone.