St. Athanasius and SSPX

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Warandpeace

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Greetings!

I commented on a youtube video of an SSPX member. Didn’t realize what I was watching until I was quite a bit through it. Anyway, his defense for not being in full communion with the Catholic Church is that St. Athanasius wasn’t either, and he is still a saint. Is this correct? I don’t know much about this saint, or the SSPX. They aren’t in my area. Any info/apologetic advice would be appreciated!
 
Warandpeace said:
Greetings!

I commented on a youtube video of an SSPX member. Didn’t realize what I was watching until I was quite a bit through it. Anyway, his defense for not being in full communion with the Catholic Church is that St. Athanasius wasn’t either, and he is still a saint. Is this correct? I don’t know much about this saint, or the SSPX. They aren’t in my area. Any info/apologetic advice would be appreciated!
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria
 
Hi,

About 15 years ago a friend tried to recruit me into SSPX and one of the arguments he used was “St Athanasius was excommunicated by Pope Liberius, and he and his followers went into the desert, and eventually Rome returned to them.”. The analogy was with Pope JPII excommunicating Abp Lefebvre.

I thought that was quite a good argument, so looked up the historical details, and found that they didn’t match the SSPX account. I can’t recall it all now, but it was (more or less), Pope Liberius’ excommunication was done under duress, and was short lived (or may not have even happened) and it did not affect the whole church, ie. the picture of Athanasius in exile, representing The Faith, was not correct.

This was back in 1998 for me. Since then there have been two more popes, so Athanasius short lived ex-communication (if it even happened) does not compare with the ongoing ex-communication of SSPX.

My recommendation is that with any historical arguments you hear from SSPX you ask them exactly what they mean, and ask for the exact historical details. You will always find that they can’t back up their arguments.
 
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