The Twenty Mysteries of the Rosary?

I was only trying to be somewhat supportive and understanding.

Beautiful post!

<> I think I ought to fly up there, go to your Parish and after Mass meet you, Tom Fleming, Scott Reichart and the gang and open some nice bottles of red wine and listen to some sensible, Catholic, conservative talk

It would even be nice to have sitetest there - if we could convince him to leave his Virginian Cabernet at home :)<>

<> You are welcome<>

<>U R, you are way off re Black Elk. I don't think he is either smug or dumb. He has a great sense of humor, he is well-informed, well-read, intelligent and he is very funny -and fully Catholic, in the best sense of that word<>

<> Congarian sect? LOL While that is inane, it is funny. Is that yours or did you lift it from another?<>

Again, you miss the point. It was not that Jesus made a mistake in picking Judas, it was that his selection didn't suspend Judas' freedom to do evil. You may have passed the bar, but you don't pass basic catachesis. As for the SSPX, get used to it. It's all that's left of the old faith and it's growing as fast as the new religion is dissolving in its own sorry corruptions. And while you may fancy yourself a Catholic and delude yourself that I am not, you should know I believe and practice exactly what Catholics have believed and practiced for the past two thousand years. If I'm out of line, so is the entire history of the Church until the new religion was unjustly imposed. After all, the Society doesn't go around praying with animists and excusing Jews from a need for redemption. Nor does it routinely violate the Council of Trent. All that's strictly a post-conciliar thing, concocted by geniuses who happen to like pedophiles, out of line with anything that remotely resembles Christian revelation. And by the way--none of you have bothered to answer the question I posed earlier, to wit: if I am wrong to hear the ancient Mass in an SSPX chapel, what does that make the Pope who prays with witchdoctors? I mean PRAYS with them, placing their fantasies on a par with the Catholic faith, not just schmooze with them. Or doesn't the First Commandment apply to popes?

Dear Catholicguy,

"It would even be nice to have sitetest there - if we could convince him to leave his Virginian Cabernet at home :)<>"

Heck, if you're providing the wine, I'll keep my Virginian Cabernet for myself! ;-)

sitetest

The pope is, ummmm, the pope. He is the pope when he reads newspapers. He is the pope when he is having lunch. He is the pope when he is sleeping and when he is awake. He is the pope while enjoying music and he is the pope when praying and saying Mass or the rosary. He is the pope when he signs encyclicals and the pope when he writes thank-you notes to his grocer. You are not. Neither was Lefebvre. Nor is Fellay. Nor is Williamson.

You are right. Why? Because you say so, of course. You regard yourself as the ultimate authority. Why can't everyone else? The pope is wrong because he does not obey ultima ratio. Why? Because ultima ratio says so. Hey, what higher autrhority can there be? UR disobeys and disrespects and is therefore the ultimate authority. All the SSPXers say so. The drop out of the bucket that cannot be wrong, right?

[Rolls back calendar by 485 years.] Fr. Luther posts his theses (disrespectful disobedience) on cathedral door on Witches' Sabbath. Fr. Luther is right and the pope is wrong. After all, Fr. Luther says so and he must be the highest authority because he is disresepectful and disobedient. all the Lutherans and later reformationists agree. Can they be wrong? You bet they are and so are you. [Hint: Disrespectful, disobedient and disreputable are NOT the touchstones of orthodoxy. Antiquity, universality and consensus are. This is not good news for SSPX.]

It bears repeating that your SSPX schism always begins with the notion that the gates of Hell have prevailed which they have not and will not. We have that on the Highest Authority, even higher than Lefebvre.

I don't miss the point at all. I simply do not share your fantasy any more than any other Catholic does. That numbers game of yours does not work well either. How many SSPX schismatics? How many CAtholics? The answer to the second is more than a billion as we speak. How many SSPXers?

Can this or any pope sin? Of course. Is he infallible as were they? Yes. That is due to the ongoing protection of the Paraclete. Can I or UR or Williamson or Fellay sin? Could Lefebvre sin before having to face the eternal music? Yes in all cases Other than the popes, were any of us infallible? Nope. These concepts are reasonably simple unless one's temporarily invincible pride makes submission to such aspects of the Magisterium contradictory to self-worship.

Well, thank you! Modesty had prohibited.....

Our doors are open seven days a week. Make sure in advance that Fleming is not off on a Yugoslavian tour of some sort. He and I disagree on some matters political but I always find him a challenging and entertaining and insightful partner in dialogue. I am getting to know Scott better as time goes by and there are also deep waters there. Scott does not spend a lot of time out of town.

Sitetest is also welcome. We would like to be a model for others. Let me know in advance so that I will be sure to be at St. Mary's and not one of the Novus Ordo Masses which I also frequent.

Dear Bud,

"Using your figure of a billion Catholics, then there must be 970 million 'catholics' using artificial bith control."

Sloppy, sloppy, Bud.

It's likely that several hundred million of these Catholics are children. Probably another hundred or two million are old folks. Several hundred million live in poor countries, many, many without access to contraceptives. The proof is in the still-large families in Third World nations.

Of the remaining few hundred million who live in developed Western countries, we regularly see figures that 10% - 15% of these do NOT practice artificial contraception.

Thus, your judgement of the faith "of the vast majority of [BlackElk's] brethren", that their faith "is as shallow as a bird bath", is nothing but arrogance and rash judgement.

Of course, the saddest part of your post is the implication given by your words, "the vast majority of your brethren", that the world's billion Catholics are not YOUR brethren.

sitetest

Dear Bud,

"...when it is YOU and not the Pope, who has declared the faithful who attend SSPX Masses as schismatic."

I've never said that assisting at SSPX Masses automatically makes one a schismatic. I have noted that the Church teaches that regularly assisting at these Masses leads to a schismatic mentality. The conclusion of this is that some who assist at such Masses have become schismatics. And once in a while, one can clearly see that manifest in a particular individual.

I have also noted that those who regularly assist at schismatic Masses are in danger of becoming schismatics, themselves, and that the Holy Father has told us not to assist at these Masses.

However, unlike you, I have not generalized that 97% of Catholics have a faith that is "as shallow as a bird bath".

But, I see that your argument, in any event, is nothing more than the ad hominem fallacy tu quoque - "you, also". Unable to respond to the fact that you have falsely denigrated the faith of 97% of the Catholics in the world, your response is "Well, you do it, too!"

sitetest

You have this odd idea about popes. You think they are divine beings. Did you know that Dante believed the See of Peter during his own day had been made a tomb of "blood and filth"? In one of his cantos for Paradiso he has St. Peter declare that Boniface VIII was an abomination and his chair was therefore vacant. That was in 1300 and Dante has been praised for his Catholic orthodoxy ever since. So this idea of yours that the Pope is beyond reproach is another novelty, a totally unCatholic idea. We not only have the right to resist the Pope when he violates orthodoxy, we have the positive duty. I think the contrary idea--that the pope is right even when he's wrong, has taken hold with Neo-Catholics like yourself because the papacy is all that's left that separates the New Church from outright Protestantism. It's the single Church institution remaining that is still distinctly Catholic. Everything else has been changed or suppressed or protestantized outright.

Still another peculiar idea of yours is that the Paraclete protects the pope continually. That is not a Catholic doctrine. The protection, in any case, is negative: the Holy Spirit protects the pope from error when he speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals, something he very seldom does. This is not a gift that protects the pope from sin or that protects the pope from doing a lot of stupid things in the name of the Church he governs. History is full of popes doing stupid things, including the excommunication of at least one saint.

Another idea of yours that is strange is that obedience is somehow always good. But clearly it is not. There is such a thing as false obedience and Thomas Aquinas explains why. He says we must always obey God before man, even when that man is the Pope himself. This is because no pope may command us to do what is evil, especially when it would harm the Church. He may not set up his own novel doctrines and supercede the traditions and teachings of the Church and then compel us to give these our interior assent. Nor may a pope be passively indifferent when his subordinates suppress or contradict the deposit of faith. Yet this Pope does precisely this by creating a climate whereby every traditional truth is questioned and routinely undermined. And by doing so, he violates his own papal oath:

I VOW TO CHANGE NOTHING OF THE RECEIVED TRADITION AND NOTHING THEREOF I HAVE FOUND BEFORE ME GUARDED BY MY GOD-PLEASING PREDECESSORS, TO ENCROACH UPON, TO ALTER, OR TO PERMIT ANY INNOVATION THEREIN;

TO THE CONTRARY; WITH GLOWING AFFECTION AS HER TRULY FAITHFUL STUDENT AND SUCCESSOR, TO SAFEGUARD REVERENTLY THE PASSED-ON GOOD, WITH MY WHOLE STRENGTH AND UTMOST EFFORT...

I WILL KEEP WITHOUT SACRIFICE TO ITSELF THE DISCIPLINE AND THE RITE OF THE CHURCH. I WILL PUT OUTSIDE THE RITE ANYONE WHO DARES TO GO AGAINST THIS OATH, MAY IT BE SOMEBODY ELSE OR I...

ACCORDINGLY, WITHOUT EXCLUSION, WE SUBJECT TO SEVEREST EXCOMMUNICATION ANYONE--BE IT OURSELVES OR BE IT ANOTHER--WHO WOULD DARE TO UNDERTAKE ANYTHING NEW IN CONTRADICTION TO THIS EVANGELICAL TRADITION AND THE PURITY OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, OR WOULD SEEK TO CHANGE ANYTHING BY HIS OPPOSING EFFORTS, OR WOULD AGREE WITH THOSE WHO UNDERTAKE SUCH A BLASPHEMOUS VENTURE.

You say I set myself up as the ultimate authority. But this is patently false. In fact, traditionalists like myself are quite strictly bound--to the teachings of the ancient faith as taught by the popes and councils of the Catholic Church right up to Vatican II. It is you, and others like you, who reject the Church's own past, who freely choose to follow something new, something untested, something never before seen or heard in the Church, new doctrines and ideas and practices, new standards for morality, new attitudes and practices in worship. So we have been forced to choose: between this Pope and his many novelties concocted out of the ambiguities of a minor non-dogmatic council--and all the popes and councils of preceding millenia. I believe I have chosen wisely.

By the way, in the numbers game you lose. The SSPX aligns itself with all the Catholics that have gone before since apostolic times. We are Catholic in exactly the same way they were Catholic and are faithful to all the councils exactly as they were. This is the Cmmunion of Saints, remember? How many of those who have lived before would recognize this New Church thing you think is Catholic? How many would not think, could they return, that they had stumbled instead into a new religion, something as alien as Buddhism? You New Church Catholics, on the other hand, share little in common with them, dating back as you do only to the late sixties. Do you think they cared primarily about world peace or social justice or the environment and gay rights? They were passionate about Christ's Redemption and the Holy Trinity and the Real Presence. As I say, you lose. Where numbers are concerned, it's no contest.

I think many parents don't care what religious beliefs their offspring have.

This is true across denominations. If the parents have an indifferentist outlook, how can the children be expected to know, care or believe in their family's nominal religion?

That any of them at all do pursue the things of God is due to His calling them. It is despite, not because of, their upbringing.