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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?

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.