Dear FourtySeven,
I suspect that the SSPX waxes in one place while waning in another.
Some years ago, when I first began to encounter the followers of the SSPX schism, they asserted that the SSPX was a rapidly growing movement. I went to one of the websites, and found that worldwide, the SSPX has about 500 priests. That's perhaps half as many as live in the Archdiocese of Washington.
An SSPX sympathizer assured me that that was old data, from the early or mid-1990s. They had many more priests now (this was four or five years ago), he assured me.
I dug a little and found that they still had roughly 500 priests at that time. And even today, their numbers hover around 500 priests.
In the meanwhile, I suspect that the laity who attend their Masses probably haven't increased dramatically, either.
It's a stagnant, stagnating group of folks. It would be wonderful if the pope could persuade them to effect corporate reunion, but I think that their moment has passed, and it is quite possible that they will fade increasingly into irrelevancy.
It's too bad. There is nothing good about losing Catholics to schism.
sitetest
Having been in the SSPX formerly, I can tell you that their growth was more rapid in their earlier years. From about the mid-90's on, that growth has stagnated as you indicated. Their only growth is now coming from large numbers of children born to its members, and a sizeable percentage of these children have not nor will not necessarily remain either in the SSPX or as practicing Catholics. Sad, but the same overly authoritarian attitudes of pre-V2 are rampant in the SSPX, and those attitudes are having a similar affect on how the children cannot embrace Catholicism personally and lovingly.
It's too bad. There is nothing good about losing Catholics to schism.
Amen. It's a sad affair.
It is amasing so many "bought into" the idea a schism preserves Tradition. I 'spose because of the radical changes in the West, for polemical reasons wrongly attributed to Vatican Two, the relative "security" of the sspx seemed attractive.
It had all the observable physical manifestations of being the same as what we were familiar with. We could observe the same Liturgy, Vestments, and Fortress-Catholicism so many of us grew-up with.
For many of us originally attracted to it, it took a awhile to realise it was a schismatic revolution within a traditional form.
To me, that was an eye-opener. Was my Faith built upon Jesus or upon obeying rules?
The change in the discipline of Meatless Fridays and the response to it by so many Catholics revealed to me just how shallow was our "Faith." I know a lot of people for whom that change may just as well have been an atomic bomb. That change blew-away their "faith," such as it was.
And we were supposed to be the brightest, best educated Catholic generation ever. Looking back it is difficult to admit that what semed so rock-solid was, in reality, suspect, fragile, and deracinated.
When what we are familiar with is taken away from us our relationship with Jesus is exposed for what it really is. The revolution in the West was a "Blessing in disguise" as my Dad used to say about other things. For those of us with eyes to see, it revealed to ourselves just who we are and what we believe and who it is we love.
Unless the SSPX returns to the Church, the group will not only stagnate but it will eventually start to decline in numbers and significance. If they remain in schism, they will be the losers, not the Church.