Are the SSPX in schism?

[GerardP]

Why would he need to interview the SSPX priests when their writings are on their website?

He didn’t reference or discuss the writings on their websites. He said “some supporters of the sspx say…” or “some sspx priests hold” but he doesn’t quote them or reference them. It’s actually just hearsay because he’s probably never met an SSPX priest.

They’re hardly secretive about what they say.

Yes. Funny how they would avoid dealing directly with them. That’s probably because their intended readership is not SSPX attendees that they hope to persuade. It’s people that have no experience with the SSPX, so they will be prejudiced against them.

Bishop Williamson doesn’t believe women should attend a university (but an SSPX college is fine).

Here’s a perfect example of that kind of tactic. You don’t mention the bishop’s perspective of what a university should be. You think he’s talking about the dens of iniquity and stupidity that are called “universities” today. Places that anyone who loves their children would never wish to send them.

You don’t mention that Bishop W. doesn’t think that it’s healthy most men to attend University. He believes that the modern world is destroying men’s natural inclination to work with his hands and by the sweat of his brow. Universities should be for an elite group of men who are leaders. His analogy of a football team is very appropriate. The fewest numbers of men are flexible enough to lead as quarterbacks. There is a second group of men that are flexible enough to be halfbacks and there are a larger group of men that just needed to be given a task as guards and do their job.

The modern society wants to convince people that everyone is a quarterback. It’s foolishness.

He thinks the Sound of Music has pornographic elements.

If you can actually let go of your sentimental attachment to the film and address his arguments, you’ll find that he’s correct.

Hollywood managed to bleed virtually all of the Catholicism out of the Von Trapp story. Including Msgr. Franz Wasner who lived with and fled with the family to the U.S.A.

Romance is the ideal in the Sound of Music. It’s trash like Harry Potter, Rock and Roll, Will and Grace and a thousand other secular poisons.

Why do I need to interview him to say that this is true.

Because it’s the honest thing to do instead of taking things out of context.

Also, Pete Vere, co-author, was an SSPX attendee and had personal dealings with the priests of the SSPX.

I have doubts about the “former” Satanist’s intentions. It’s was one of his ludicrous articles about Bishop Williamson that made me research the bishop. What a blessing in disguise it was.

And again, you would have thought he would have been able to quote priests specifically by name.

I managed to go on Madrid’s blog and give him the names of good SSPS priests among them: Fr. Eric Simonot, Fr. Grieg Gonzalez. I’m sure he could’ve gotten interviews with them.

What’s your beef with the Suprised by Truth books? Those are personal stories from converts. What footnotes are needed here? :whacky:

I’m just saying it’s no different than your original point. That you’re just supposed to believe what they say. I personally doubt a few of the stories. Vere’s in particular.

And one other point. I looked through my library last night and checked footnotes. It seems you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Tom Wood’s religious writings all have copious footnotes. The Great Facade, The Church Confronts Modernity, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.

I checked the books by Ferrara and Micheal Davies: Yep. They all have footnotes.

I didn’t need to Check Atila Sinke Guimareas because half of each page is footnotes in his collection.

Ironically I checked God and World by Card. Ratzinger and Crossing the Threshold of Hope by JPII and no footnotes.
I guess we can give them a pass because they were transcribed interviews but it does rise to questions about your raising doubts about footnotes.

 

[TMC]

It’s surprising to me and instruvctive too, to realize that radical liberals and radical conservatives claim the identical stance for their predicatably contrarian views: primacy of conscience.

Who could have imagined that? Yet personal interpretation of Scripture and Canon Law can lead to so many errors when one is neither a Scripture scholar nor a canon lawyer.

Yes, this is precisely true. As is your point on personal interpretation.

As one who is often labeled a “liberal” I would point to an important difference. If I disagree with the Church on something I admit that I am in dissent. I have trouble with the Church’s teachings in some areas; I have discussed that at length in other threads. I study and pray on this constantly. I have sufficient ego to listen to my conscience, but sufficient sense to fear that my reason and conscience may be wrong, and I pray about that, too.

But I do **not **claim that my positions are really the Church’s positions, or that if you read the Councilar documents “carefully” you will see that they say something different than what the Pope says they do, and so forth.

Some are looking for obedience. All I ask for is intellectual honesty. I am finding neither.

 

[GerardP]

I can find no good outcome for those who would “study” and absorb and support the teachings of excommunicated priests. Who would recommend such a practice?

Not me. Of course, you would have to know what a valid excommunication is.

Just because a Pope says someone excommunicated themself doesn’t mean it’s a fact. If a Pope says someone is green with three eyes, it doesn’t make it a fact.

But since you don’t have a clue about what the “teachings” of the SSPX are (Catholic) since you purposely keep yourself ignorant about them, your opinion is just pure uninformed prejudice.

 

[Walking_Home]

Not me. Of course, you would have to know what a valid excommunication is.

Just because a Pope says someone excommunicated themself doesn’t mean it’s a fact. If a Pope says someone is green with three eyes, it doesn’t make it a fact.

But since you don’t have a clue about what the “teachings” of the SSPX are (Catholic) since you purposely keep yourself ignorant about them, your opinion is just pure uninformed prejudice./QUOTE]​

Looks that way.

 

[catharina]

Yes, this is precisely true. As is your point on personal interpretation.

As one who is often labeled a “liberal” I would point to an important difference. If I disagree with the Church on something I admit that I am in dissent. I have trouble with the Church’s teachings in some areas; I have discussed that at length in other threads. I study and pray on this constantly. I have sufficient ego to listen to my conscience, but sufficient sense to fear that my reason and conscience may be wrong, and I pray about that, too.

**But I do **not ****claim that my positions are really the Church’s positions, or that if you read the Councilar documents “carefully” you will see that they say something different than what the Pope says they do, and so forth.

Some are looking for obedience. All I ask for is intellectual honesty. I am finding neither.

Then you’re not “radical,” are you?

 

[catharina]

GP and WH -

One teaching never changed from my earliest days studying the Catechism to years spent completing studies in Theology.

When the Holy Father says: inquiry stops here - it does for me.

Can’t imagine where you “learned” otherwise.

 

[GerardP]

Knowing he read Kant is different from saying that he adopted Kant’s ideas. Presumably Williamson would have read Kant also if he actually studied philosophy.

You got all in an uproar because Williamson said the truth that JPII studied Kant. You treated it like a false accusation that Williamson didn’t provide proof for. In other words Williamson is supposed to anticipate your ignorance and supply notes for every fact due to your ignorance. Had you known that JPII studied Kant, you would not have raised and eyebrow. I suppose Williamson is supposed to produce JPII’s passport and birth certificate if he mentions he was Polish.

My point about his failure to quote properly is valid. There is no citation supporting his assertion about the Pope being a Kantian.

I disagree. There is no “set rule” for proper footnotes regarding a seminary rector’s letter to friends and benefactors. You’re placing an unfair standard on the letter in a desperate attempt to belittle Williamson.

Look, if you want to call out JPII for being a modernist do it like a man.

Oh spare me. You’ve lost this argument and now you’re resorting to girlie tactics. Scratch…scratch…

Take something he wrote and critique it instead of linking to crackpot amateur theologians like Williamson.

Well…Who can argue with the logic of your ad-hominem?

You need to go find yourself a new hobby. You make a career of trashing the SSPX and your not good at it. Let the conversation go on long enough and your out of bullets.

Eventually you’ll be complaining that Williamson is too tall or too handsome or you don’t like the British accent.

If you don’t like the truth, don’t go posting your lies about the SSPX and take up sewing instead.

It’s obvious you didn’t expect your idol “JPII the Great’s” awesome “philosophy” to be toppled so credibly with his most celebrated conservative encyclical. Which is a shame because he’s a man, not a god. And it’s not fair or Catholic to impose the crushing weight of being God on a mere man.

Enjoy your schism!

I’ll try and keep you in my prayers. You’re going to go through a terrible time when you start to face the truth and your cult of personality idolization of the late Holy Father gives way to a very fallible man. Probably a good man but a weak and unsuccessful Pope.

 

[Walking_Home]

Seriously? I thought this was too obvious to need explaining. If there was no need to develop and explain doctrine, why have there been 21 councils??

Here is a good example – the Council of Ephesus. It settled the issue of Nestorianism, and declared Mary the Theotokus among other things. It was extremely heated. A large portion of the Church could not accept these teaching and split off. We call them the Assyrian Church. So were these doctines understood by everyone for six centuries and one day suddenly the Assyrians decided to run off? The council advanced the understanding of doctrine and some people did not agree. Just like VII.

Here is another - the Second Council of Constantinople, which was also mostly about Christology. It declared that Origen was wrong about the nature of Christ. Heard of him? There was a lot of discord in the Church over the council’s pronouncements, but there are no Origenists in the Church today. Did this Council not announce anything new? If no, how did Origen get it wrong for all those years?

As for the statement you quote from Vatican I – this merely says that the Truth is the Truth, it does not say that doctrine cannot continue to develop and evolve. More interesting to SSPX, I would think, are the Canons just below the one you quote:

---

Back to this. A Council maintains and preserves the Truth by declaring on it. It puts in writing what the Truth is --with its sense and understanding that is to be maintained and held.
Once that Truth (with its sense and understanding) is declared —its sense and understanding cannot be changed to a different sense and understanding under the disguise that it has devoloped and evolved.

What is being promoted is the error of Anton Guenther and/or some variation of it.

newadvent.org/cathen/13001a.htm

During the past century the Church has been called on to reject as erroneous several views of Revelation irreconcilable with Catholic belief. Three of these may here be noted.

The view of Anton Guenther (1783-1863). This writer denied that Revelation could include mysteries strictly so-called, inasmuch as the human intellect is capable of penetrating to the full all revealed truth. He taught, further, that the meaning to be attached to revealed doctrines is undergoing constant change as human knowledge grows and man’s mind develops; so that the dogmatic formul which are now true will gradually cease to be so. His writings were put on the Index in 1857, and his erroneous propositions definitively condemned in the decrees of the Vatican Council.

 

[TMC]

Not me. Of course, you would have to know what a valid excommunication is.

Just because a Pope says someone excommunicated themself doesn’t mean it’s a fact. If a Pope says someone is green with three eyes, it doesn’t make it a fact.

But since you don’t have a clue about what the “teachings” of the SSPX are (Catholic) since you purposely keep yourself ignorant about them, your opinion is just pure uninformed prejudice.

OK, so I just wasted a little bit of my life going to the SSPX.org website to see for myself what the teachings are. Here are some of the things I found:

---

The NO Mass is sacrilegious, and an affront to God. All NO Masses are illicit, and although it is technically possible to have a valid NO Mass it is unlikely.

Receiving Communion in the hand is a mortal sin. Receiving from an EMHC is a mortal sin.

Confessions heard by a “NO priest” may be valid, but there is significant doubt so it is not reccomended that anyone confess to them.

Because the Jews are, as a race, guilty of deicide they have been cursed for all time. As a result they are incapable of discerning good from evil, which is why they are so obsessed with money and wordly goods.

Slavery is not imcompatable with the Church’s teachings on faith and morals and the Civil War was an unjust war of economic domination by the North on the people of the South.

---

No - I did not make the last two up. I don’t need to know anymore about what SSPX teaches, thank you.

 

[Sure]

You got all in an uproar because Williamson said the truth that JPII studied Kant. You treated it like a false accusation that Williamson didn’t provide proof for. In other words Williamson is supposed to anticipate your ignorance and supply notes for every fact due to your ignorance. Had you known that JPII studied Kant, you would not have raised and eyebrow. I suppose Williamson is supposed to produce JPII’s passport and birth certificate if he mentions he was Polish.

I disagree. There is no “set rule” for proper footnotes regarding a seminary rector’s letter to friends and benefactors. You’re placing an unfair standard on the letter in a desperate attempt to belittle Williamson.

Oh spare me. You’ve lost this argument and now you’re resorting to girlie tactics. Scratch…scratch…

Well…Who can argue with the logic of your ad-hominem?

You need to go find yourself a new hobby. You make a career of trashing the SSPX and your not good at it. Let the conversation go on long enough and your out of bullets.

Eventually you’ll be complaining that Williamson is too tall or too handsome or you don’t like the British accent.

If you don’t like the truth, don’t go posting your lies about the SSPX and take up sewing instead.

It’s obvious you didn’t expect your idol “JPII the Great’s” awesome “philosophy” to be toppled so credibly with his most celebrated conservative encyclical. Which is a shame because he’s a man, not a god. And it’s not fair or Catholic to impose the crushing weight of being God on a mere man.

I’ll try and keep you in my prayers. You’re going to go through a terrible time when you start to face the truth and your cult of personality idolization of the late Holy Father gives way to a very fallible man. Probably a good man but a weak and unsuccessful Pope.

I suppose we’ll have to disagree here. I have been unable to counter your arguments to your satisfaction. You think Williamson’s letter was brilliant. I think it was a muddled mess of incompetence and didn’t come close to “toppling” JPII.

One thing remains at the end of this conversation: The Church still teaches authoritatively that Lefevbre was excommunicated and that there was no necessity. This is utterly indisputable. It has been stated and clarified by the competent authorities. So, you are left with two choices: 1. The authorities are correct or 2. The authorities made a mistake. I believe they were correct. You believe they made a mistake.

Good luck with your position and the consequences that flow from it.

 

[GerardP]

OK, so I just wasted a little bit of my life going to the SSPX.org website to see for myself what the teachings are. Here are some of the things I found:

---

The NO Mass is sacrilegious, and an affront to God. All NO Masses are illicit, and although it is technically possible to have a valid NO Mass it is unlikely.

Receiving Communion in the hand is a mortal sin. Receiving from an EMHC is a mortal sin.

Confessions heard by a “NO priest” may be valid, but there is significant doubt so it is not reccomended that anyone confess to them.

Because the Jews are, as a race, guilty of deicide they have been cursed for all time. As a result they are incapable of discerning good from evil, which is why they are so obsessed with money and wordly goods.

Slavery is not imcompatable with the Church’s teachings on faith and morals and the Civil War was an unjust war of economic domination by the North on the people of the South.

---

No - I did not make the last two up. I don’t need to know anymore about what SSPX teaches, thank you.

Post some quotes with links and I’ll provide the context and the true arguments that you leave out.

I’m always amazed but never surprised at the unwillingness of anti-SSPXers to actually allow the SSPX to speak for themselves. Instead we have to “be told” what they believe.

 

[GerardP]

I suppose we’ll have to disagree here. I have been unable to counter your arguments to your satisfaction. You think Williamson’s letter was brilliant. I think it was a muddled mess of incompetence and didn’t come close to “toppling” JPII.

Ah yes…the footnotes issue made it a muddled mess.

One thing remains at the end of this conversation: The Church still teaches authoritatively that Lefevbre was excommunicated and that there was no necessity.

No. The Church doesn’t “teach” excommunications and the necessity.

The Pope fallibly rule on an issue of prudential judgement.

This is utterly indisputable. It has been stated and clarified by the competent authorities.

That leads us back to the charge of schism and the allowance of the faithful to attend masses of the SSPX.

So, you are left with two choices: 1. The authorities are correct or 2. The authorities made a mistake. I believe they were correct. You believe they made a mistake.

One of us doesn’t break the law of non-contradiction to hold our beliefs.

Good luck with your position and the consequences that flow from it.

Don’t worry. I’m fighting against modernis for you too.

 

[TMC]

Post some quotes with links and I’ll provide the context and the true arguments that you leave out.

I’m always amazed but never surprised at the unwillingness of anti-SSPXers to actually allow the SSPX to speak for themselves. Instead we have to “be told” what they believe.

Wasn’t it you that suggested that we learn more about the teachings? Which of these that I posted is untrue or out of context? Here is the link:

sspx.org/catholicfaqs.html

 

[stmaria]

TMC;2966443]Seriously? I thought this was too obvious to need explaining. If there was no need to develop and explain doctrine, why have there been 21 councils??
As for the statement you quote from Vatican I – this merely says that the Truth is the Truth, it does not say that doctrine cannot continue to develop and evolve.

I can understand that Dogma needed to be explained centuries ago because at that time the doctrine WAS NEW. But today? Is our understanding of “Religious Liberty “ and Ecumenism” so different from the traditional teaching that it has to be explained?
If the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” truly evolved from previous Popes, then why aren’t there footnotes from those Popes? Where are the references to, “Quanta Cura”, Vehemnter Nos” and “* Mirari Vos*” and the " Syllabus of Errors"? There is one token reference to “Libertas” and “Immortale Dei” and yet Pope John XXXIII is referenced several times. *“Libertas" *should have been referenced at least a dozen times.

The “Decree on Ecumenism” is even worse. If this doctrine has evolved where are the footnotes to “Qui Pluribus”, “*Satis Cognitum” *and “Mortalium Animos” and the “Syllabus of Errors”?
I am reminded of the Oath against Modernism
…Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in **exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical’ misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change **from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously”

 

[TMC]

I can understand that Dogma needed to be explained centuries ago because at that time the doctrine WAS NEW. But today? Is our understanding of “Religious Liberty “ and Ecumenism” so different from the traditional teaching that it has to be explained?
If the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” truly evolved from previous Popes, then why aren’t there footnotes from those Popes? Where are the references to, “Quanta Cura”, Vehemnter Nos” and “* Mirari Vos*” and the " Syllabus of Errors"? There is one token reference to “Libertas” and “Immortale Dei” and yet Pope John XXXIII is referenced several times. *“Libertas" *should have been referenced at least a dozen times.

The “Decree on Ecumenism” is even worse. If this doctrine has evolved where are the footnotes to “Qui Pluribus”, “*Satis Cognitum” *and “Mortalium Animos” and the “Syllabus of Errors”?
I am reminded of the Oath against Modernism
…Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in **exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical’ misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change **from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously”

This position makes no sense. So the faith was fully formed in the Apostles, but not developed in detail. OK, I believe that. For centuries the Church studied, prayed, and learned. OK. Through study and prayer the understanding of the Faith advanced. Got it. Then suddenly one day – its frozen in place and no more study or development is allowed. What day was that? I would think we would have heard about it.

Yes, our understanding of some issues is so different today that it must be explained. Just as was true in the first 20 councils. The 21st was no different. Just as the first 20 councils, some have chosen to reject this council and forge their own way.

 

[stmaria]

This position makes no sense. So the faith was fully formed in the Apostles, but not developed in detail. OK, I believe that. For centuries the Church studied, prayed, and learned. OK. Through study and prayer the understanding of the Faith advanced. Got it. Then suddenly one day – its frozen in place and no more study or development is allowed. What day was that? I would think we would have heard about it.

Yes, our understanding of some issues is so different today that it must be explained. Just as was true in the first 20 councils. The 21st was no different. Just as the first 20 councils, some have chosen to reject this council and forge their own way.

So you are saying that Vatican II doctrine on Religious Liberty and Ecumenism are so different from previous understanding that it needs to be explained by theologians? Those are Pope’s John Paul’s words. Or are they just ambigious?

:Religious Liberty
“Over and above all this, the council intends to** develop the doctrine of recent popes **on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society”

All I am asking you is where are the footnotes that show where this “developement” came from. Quanta Cura , Libertas the *Syllabus of Errors * and Vehementer Nos, are ignored.

 

[Sure]

One of us doesn’t break the law of non-contradiction to hold our beliefs.

Please explain

 

[TMC]

So you are saying that Vatican II doctrine on Religious Liberty and Ecumenism are so different from previous understanding that it needs to be explained by theologians? Those are Pope’s John Paul’s words. Or are they just ambigious?

:Religious Liberty
“Over and above all this, the council intends to** develop the doctrine of recent popes **on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society”

All I am asking you is where are the footnotes that show where this “developement” came from. Quanta Cura , Libertas the *Syllabus of Errors * and Vehementer Nos, are ignored.

I think that all theological doctrines in all ages have to be explained by theologians. Its what they are for. I believe that the developments in doctrine in VII were modest compared to those is some other Councils.

I reject the idea that Popes 1000 years ago were justified in working to develop the faith, but that modern Popes are forbidden from doing so.

I reject that any of the modern Popes, or any of the Church’s current leaders, are willfully compromising the Faith in response to worldly pressures. This is such a serious accusation, essentially accusing them of abandoning Christ in pursuit of worldly accomplishment. It stuns me that so many toss this accusation around so lightly.

I am not responsible for the footnotes in documents I did not write and have deliberately avoided the ridiculous “my footnotes are better than yours” string of argument.

 

[ncjohn]

The part I find saddest is that we see the same mistakes occurring over and over through the Church’s history. Before and after every Council there have been groups that saw things differently than the Church and believed that THEY were in fact the group that understood the “truth”.

After the Church would clarify the truth and make its position known, some would come to understanding and “come home”. Others would obstinately go on, believing themselves to be the “true Church” or the “remnant” or the “Church Militant” or whatever other term they might use to indicate that their own consciences trumped the workings of the Holy Spirit through the Church.

Most of those groups still exist in one form or another, or have taken on new incarnations of the same misunderstandings. The entire Protestant reformation was about such groups and the divisions exist to this day over people who believed that they had “secret information” that the Church either didn’t have or had declined to teach. Dissenters and schismatics have existed in every age, always believing that they were the only ones who really “got it”.

But in the end, good Popes and bad, corrupt Church or holy, the Church has continued as the Apostles were promised it would. And the dissenters fall by the wayside.

They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the end, we either believe that the Church is indefectable and follow Her–for all the human faults of Her leaders–or we become just another group of dissenters to become footnotes in history.

Perhaps the SSPX will ultimately be reconciled. Perhaps the excommunications will be lifted. But to ignore the Church during the time when the Church says that there is not a reconcilliation is to stand outside the Church’s constant Tradtion and try to claim a new tradition based on personal interpretation, jsut as dissenters have in every age.

Ultimately we must all do our best to inform our consciences and then answer to them, however imperfectly they may be formed. And none of us, no matter how hard we try, have perfectly formed consciences. I truly admire the zeal and willingness to stand behind what they believe that the SSPX exhibits. But I have to strongly question the wisdom of their stance in the light of history. They may even turn out to be right on some or all of what they say. That has been true of most reformers though. There has almost always been some truth in their claims of corruption or misinterpretation of doctrine. The question always ended up being though whether they reformed the Church from inside, or left Her believing themselves to BE the true Church.

The antipathy shown from both sides is sad. It is the same antipathy that kept any possibility of reconciling those of the Protestant reformation. Thankfully the Pope continues to try to seek common ground and hopefully over time that will yield fruit. Unfortunately the bickering of those with less knowledge, based on mutual distrust, may quite possibly make that reconciliation impossible.

Father forgive us for we know not what we do…though we often seem to think we have all the answers.

Peace,

 

[Jo_Benedict]

Note:

This thread is closed. Thanks to all who participated in the discussion.