Thanks for all your support and discussion on this. Even though it now seems I can’t do anything to persuade my friend and his wife that they are in schism, it at least helps to hear from others who know a thing or two about the way this organization works.
As it turns out, this friend of mine sent me a huge box of SSPX propaganda material printed up by something called Angelus Press (for my BIRTHDAY.) It had tracts, books, a boxed set called a conversion kit or something…all of it looked rather cheap and trashy, like something from a Jack Chick tract, or like a B-grade comic book. There was a vile letter written by him included with this stuff, in which he used the saint day instead of a date (it wasn’t the saint of the day according to the Catholic calendar, either. He says they go by the REAL calendar. Yeah. Right.) To make a long story short, I threw the offensive box away and wrote him back that while I appreciated him remembering my birthday, I would not accept his gift of anti-Catholic, schismatic materials. I told him that I’d thrown them away, too, so that they couldn’t be placed in other innocent hands. I really wasn’t trying to be ungrateful, but he has been told by me many times that I have no desire to read books or tracts from SSPX. He knew better, but he did it anyway. I just told him I’d continue to pray for him and his wife. I included a blessed St. Jude medal. I just don’t know what else to do. I’ve decided to not speak to him again, because he gets more violent everytime he approaches me with this stuff: he curses, swears against the “Evil Novus Ordo” and the “bogus pope.” Just nasty, vile, hatred-spewing, rabid, demonic filth. Gives me the creeps. I really don’t think there is anything I can to do assist him, but to continue praying.
