In the mid-'90s, and then again after the excommunications of the SSPX bishops were lifted, I attended SSPX services in good conscience, on the basis that, if all the baptized are considered to be in “imperfect communion” with the Church, then the Society, which planted its feet firmly against sedevacantism and always, in my experience, had sound moral and theological teaching in its homilies, and which was attacked by a disobedient segment in the Church for using a rite which was never pontifically suppressed, could not be in a worse position than the Orthodox. If ever a contemporary case exemplified the sort of misunderstandings that the Holy See has been attempting to overcome with the Orthodox, it’s definitely the SSPX, who always vigorously support the Holy See except in those initiatives which the popes adopted starting only with John XXIII, that seem to them to be in conflict with the Syllabus of Pius IX and the anti-modernist oath which was binding on all clergy from the time of Pascendi.
That being said, the tendency of the critiques made of John Paul II and the predecessors from whom he took his name do produce a resentment towards the Holy See over the manner in which tradition was treated, and which traditionalists take very personally – and that leads to sins against charity, especially when it comes to the beatifications of John XXIII and John Paul II. The declaration of Paul VI’s heroic virtues is viewed by them as yet another obstacle to a return to full tradition.
It’s a position I pulled away from after holding it, or something close to it, to the detriment of sacramental grace & to the bond of charity with unquestionably faithful Catholics. Where a diocese is overrun with heresy and sacrilege at the mass threaten to induce one to lose one’s faith, the duty to preserve one’s faith takes precedence over the canonical irregularity of the Society.
