I think what is happening is that I am discovering I have more in common with the SSPX that I thought.
Yes, I will say, you do seem fairly well-suited to the Society of Saint Pius X. Why try to barge into the priesthood via the backdoor of Byzantium when Lefebvrism will open her front doors wide to you?
“I want to become a priest in order to save souls from hell.”
Brilliant. That is soooo the answer they’re looking for; I think every prospective SSPX seminarian gives the same answer. Throw in something about “combating the crisis in the church,” and use the word “newchurch” once or twice and you’re golden. No test, no psychological evaluation; that’s it. Here’s your cassock; please make your check out to “St. Thos. Aquinas Seminary”.
Once you get to Winona and discover that your first year is pretty much all about manual labor and that your professors, in any case, have no degrees, much less doctorates, and have nothing particularly deep or scholarly to impart to you, and can’t answer probing questions except with a suspicious, “are you trying to cause trouble?”, fear not: the liturgical ceremonies, at least, are magnificent, and they will distract you.
As your first year goes on, you’ll hear plenty about things like dire Marian warnings of calamity at Fatima and LaSalette and Garabandal, about Freemasons in the Vatican (including popes John XXIII and Paul VI), about European table manners, about “good” Fascists in history…oh…and I almost forgot…the Jews! If Glenn Beck were not a Mormon, he’d love it there. They even have blackboards.
It should seem like an oasis at first. Problem is, as you advance from year to year, the cirriculum becomes more about philosophy and theology (such as your ill-equipped professors understand either), and less energy is focused on the fringe issues that drew you to Winona begin with. Tests become harder…and you have to learn Latin: conversational Latin as well as ecclesiastical Latin. Oh, sure, you’ll still get to trash the Modernists and the Masons and predict calamity upon mankind, but only during dinner, or during mandatory physical recreation time. It’s Grand Silence after Compline: shhhhhhh.
Don’t be discouraged when you’re called into the rector’s office from time to time because one of your fellow seminarians has denounced you as a “Modernist” because of something he misheard you say to somebody else. You won’t be given the name of your accuser and you won’t be given the benefit of the doubt, but remember your reliable arsenal of magic words and catch phrases: “newchurch”, “crisis in the church”, “save souls”, “Solange Hertz”, “Michael Davies”, “Glenn Beck”, “Quanta Cura”. If none of that works, blame the Jews.
At the end of six or seven years when you’re ordained in magnificent splendour (under a tent), you, too, will be able to speak with authority about the coming calamity that
will happen (never mind they told you it would happen in five years when you first entered and still hasn’t happened yet), and boy will everyone else be sorry they didn’t listen to you when it finally does happen!
You won’t know what to do when a woman approaches you about how to deal with her abusive husband (because they’ve taught you that women deserve to be beaten by men), and you won’t have anything with which to feed the hungry who show up at the church (because that’s just not the SSPX’s thing), but you will be able to live in fear of the calamities predicted at Fatima all you want. The SSPX are fairly cozy with Gruner, too, so “woo-hoo”, right?
So, yeah, join the Society of St. Pius X. Knock yourself out.
