Replies

Calm down.

Gosh, I ... why I ... I FEEL calm. (just teasing, my friend.)

I'm not the problem

I didn't say you were, just that you are easy for the internal enemies of the Church to dismiss.

...it has to do with a Council that said a lot of ambiguous... things but did so with a general carelessness of expression that was uncharacteristic of previous councils.

I couldn't agree more. And it devastated the Church. I have always maintained that hte devil could not get the Church to teach doctrinal or moral errors, so, in his vile century, he got it to teach in a grossly sloppy, ambiguous way that his nasty minions could interpret any way they wanted.

As for my being in "full union" with the Church, you are a slow learner. In what way am I not in full union? I attend Mass at an SSPX chapel--so what? Rome has just issued a letter conceding people like myself fulfill their Sunday obligation by doing so.

Perhaps I am a slow learner. I hope not, though. I know that your Masses are valid, but so are the eastern Orthodox Masses, but we are not to attend them because they are scismatic. We can attend them to fulfill the Sunday obligation only if no roman Catholic Masses are available. Now, without getting all fired up, tell me exactly how the status of the SSPX Masses differ from that.

P.S. I go to a beautiful indult mass, where our wonderful priest suffers immeasurably at the hands of the horrid new-age bishop for his orthodoxy. The priest wants so much for you guys to come back in full union with the Church, but says the Church holds you as scismatic. I tend to go with him, as he is careful to hold to the faith and is even (and this is very difficult for this firebrand of a priest who was educated in Rome for nine years after he became a priest) obedient and charitable toward the bishop who hates him.

If you please, brother, enlighten this "slow learner". I will consider all that you have to say.

First, the SSPX is not schismatic. But let's save that for another time--I've explained this so often it's tiresome.
Second, the letter from Msgr. Perl of Ecclesia Dei says nothing about attending an SSPX Mass only if no other Roman Catholic Mass is available. It implicitly recognized that Novus Ordo Masses themselves pose doctrinal problems which are unacceptable to traditionalist Catholics. It stated that Catholics who attend SSPX Masses are not committing sins as long as they don't do so with the express desire to separate themselves from Rome. Since SSPX has always denied it wished to be so separated, this last seemed a sop to cover for the Vatican bureaucrat's own embarrassment in having to make his admission in the first place. As for not attending an Indult, in my own case, I loathed the priest who said the Mass and who appeared to me a charlatan. (He did not last long--though he did a lot of damage. He was appointed right after the great turmoil in which FSSP was punished by Rome for its stand against concelebrations, etc.)

Here's an important point you need to consider. It is the existence of the SSPX that has been protecting the Indult all this while. In fact, without the SSPX, there would have been no Indult, no traditional Mass, no traditional Catholicism in most places. SSPX alone held the line from the beginning. It refused to go along with the widespread demolition of Catholic Tradition. If the SSPX were to accept the blandishments of the Novus Ordo Church as Campos did, then it would be pressured to change and conform little by little to the Novus Ordo Church--just as the Indult priests are being pressured, as well as the priests of Campos. It is only because of what Rome calls its "irregular" status that SSPX is able to protect ALL of Catholic tradition--in a way not even the Indult priests can do. In this sense its status as "schismatic", while a false accusation, has the side benefit of protecting Tradition itself from Rome's destructive impulses.