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It has taken a while but you at least admit being in schism. I realize that you imagine that it is a conditional admission. You are not choosing between the alternatives you suggest but between your preferred alternative of "Non Serviam" and the Faith.

I am no more interested in the arguments of schismatics than I am interested in the arguments of those in heresy. Rome is right. You are wrong.

Even if occasionally you advance a fact or two, you will certainly ignore the fact that the saying of the normative Mass of the Church by one priest does absolutely nothing to deprive a second priest (who is not REQUIRED to say the Novus Ordo by anyone) of his rights.

In fact, if you check out post #70 herein, kindly provided by Sandyeggo which contains the actual text of the letter of Dario Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos, a man of considerably higher standing in the Vatican than his secretary, you will find the unvarnished truth shorn of the schismatic editorial opinions often substituted for truth by you. You would do well to pay that letter serious heed since Dario Castrillon de Hoyos is a long-time favorite and willing assistant to John Paul II in helping him to crush "Liberation Theology" and since 11 of the 20 voting members of the College of Cardinals appointed at the last consistory were from Latin America as is the good cardinal and since he is considered quite papabile.

As you can see from the letter, Dario Castrillon de Hoyos may well prove to be the pope who deals with SSPX as fully as necessary. It is not difficult to intuit from his letter his concern that the Tridentine MAss itself and some alleged exclusivity by which FSSP priests were not to be permitted to say the Novus Ordo were the targets of his action. Anyone who has listened to you ranting and raving against the Novus Ordo as a Protrestantized Mass, assome sort of work analogous to that of Luther, etc., etc., ad nauseam, should have no difficulty figuring out why the Vatican has had enough with your schism anbd why it will act against a tiny and willful band determined to defy Rome at any cost.

At the Novus Ordo Mass, I hear: This is My Body and I hear This is My Blood. What was that about disparaging the Real Prsence? As to the orientation of the altar, ad orientem is preferable to ad populum but it is hardly a crisis of Faith. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. "Quelle surprise!", as your excommunicated founder might say.

The reason Rome goes ballistic regarding the traditionalist's rejection of the Novus Ordo, is that it seeks acceptance from those who know what Catholic tradition is precisely because they have lived it without a break the past forty years. Rome wants the imprimatur, so to speak, of all previous popes before the Council. And it wants to beat-down anybody who would affirm an allegiance to the doctrines defined by Trent, rather than to Bugnini's concoction. SSPX in particular has refused to say something that is so obviously Protestant, is Catholic. For this it is persecuted.

I make no concession, therefore, to being schismatic by attending SSPX Masses, but only meant to underscore the absurdity of your charge by using a little sarcasm. But you reply by saying "Rome is right", then turn around and reject whatever Rome is saying to prove my point---namely, that Catholics who attend SSPX Masses are not schismatics. You sniff at this unambiguous declaration and want to pick and choose like everybody else. Not that I blame you--Rome is an unsure guide for certitude these days. It speaks out about a great many things and gets a lot of them totally wrong--which is why it has been obliged to do a lot of back-tracking the past forty years. This is not esepcially surprising for a regime that makes things up as it goes along.

So let me ask you--was Pius IX mistaken when he warned us to disobey any pope who would ask us to follow him into error rather than follow the faith? And how do we judge such a thing in the first place? Easy--when a pope substitutes his own version of the faith for what has been handed-down, he is standing on erroneous ground. That is the bottom line. And there is another test--given by Christ himself who warned us to be wary of false prophets who would look like pussycats--or maybe rock stars. By their fruits we were to know them. Well, we've seen their fruits. The springtime never came.

You see then, it is not I who cry out "Non serviam", but people like yourself who serve a man and not the faith. Non serviam was Lucifer's refusal to serve God, remember, not a mere pope subject to humanity's weaknesses. You have confused the two, then turn around and accuse me of doing precisely what you do.

In any case, it is pointless to track down every give and take of this dispute with Hoyos and FSSP and SSPX. It is to be expected that somebody like yourself, for whom authority trumps everything else--even the facts themselves--would give undue weight to that particular side of the argument, though you ignore this same prefect when it is inconvenient. The bottom line is that the Cardinal acted against FSSP in a way he would never have dared act against even the most egregiously corrupt and apostate churchmen. No one doubts that behind such animus is the Boss himself whose novel policies and highly selective use of discipline speak volumes about the continual rejection of Catholic tradition. Clown Masses, gay Masses, polka Masses, yes. But an exclusive use of the ancient Mass, no. That says it all.

Finally, it is certainly true you may hear, "This is My Body and this is My Blood" at a Novus Ordo Mass, but you can also hear this same invocation at an Eastern Orthodox liturgy--or at a Lutheran Lord's Supper for that matter. What you apparently are not hearing or seeing or thinking is that the Novus Ordo is permeated by Protestant doctrines which continue to undermine the Catholic faith. Pius XII warned us this dark age was coming, that we would some day search in vain for the red sanctuary lamp. That day is now here. Father Jeremy now has center stage instead of the tabernacle, with Sister Stephanie at his side to bathe in the spotlight and perhaps give the sermon or do a dance, and with myriad other ministers to stand around to drink in the applause. Meanwhile Blessed Sacrament is shunted to an obscure church corner and is forgotten. If this isn't at bottom Protestant, nothing is.