The Latest Public Statement of the SSPX

[saveusfromhell]

Do me a favor? Take a look at several threads and observe who it is that begins the attack. Go back even a few years. Nine out of ten times, trads initiate the provocation and harassment due to a false sense of being victimized, or anger towards those who choose to worship in another form where they do not approve of their lawful practices. It is never-ending. The problem is not with the two different forms of liturgy. The problem is in the heart of the one who feels obligated to convert the other to their more “superior” form, while casting stones at the other’s liturgy as being deficient.

There is a poster here who never misses a drumbeat to promote latin. Others are not so obvious, but attack the very things as you did in this post. Who initiated the conflict? Why can’t trads who are on a different side of the fence just leave it be? Perhaps they feel an unrest that urges them to consistently vent their anger in this forum. I rest my case.

how did you go from agreeing with Jr education to going on to the offensive 2 posts later. by the way i have no idea about the sspx or if latin is better or not,but talking about who starts a conflict as a justification seems to have missed Jreducation point. while the whole post reads like petrol being poured on a fire

 

[Lormar]

I sometimes have a little time between Morning Prayer and mass to check in on what’s happening in the world and I stop in here. Every morning I see the same thing, arguing. I don’t believe that any of this arguing is necessary or appreciated by most people. I would certainly discourage it. The Church is not a war zone with two, three or more armies clashing on a field. The Church is a people in route to its eternal destiny. Along this route there are many lanes, but the highway is wide enough to accommodate all of us, if we don’t push each other from side to side.

Instead of throwing mud at each other, because of our differences, we should (as much as I hate to use the expression) look for our common ground. Our common ground is always Christ, the Lord of time and history. He is not the Meshiah of the Mainstream Catholic, the Traditionalist or the SSPX, but the Meshiah of all peoples, including those who do not yet know that Catholic faith or who knowing about it are unable to comprehend what we Catholics are blessed to understand.

We spend too much time casting aspersions of this forum. To waste God’s time in this manner is as grave a sin as a hootenanny at a mainstream parish or a homily that trashes the Holy Father at a TLM mass. God has not given us the gift of time to waste on such ridiculous arguments. God has given us the gift of time so that we might give it back to him through prayer, worship, penance and works of charity. But while we’re here throwing stones at each other and defending disobedience that cannot be defended, we waste God’s time. It is not our time. We did not create time. God created time when he created the sun and the moon to rule the day and night. At some point, we will be held accountable for this waste of God’s time.

It does not please God one iota to see his people filled with hatred over those things that are holy. On the contrary, it displeases the Father very much, because it distorts the face of the Son. When a mainstream Catholic lashes out at a Traditionalist, he lashes out at Christ. But make no mistake about it. When the Traditionalist lashes out at the mainstream Catholic, it is still the same holy face. Whether we prays in Latin or in Swahili, it is Christ whom we attack when we attack our brothers and sisters. The language in which we pray does nothing for charity. Charity is found in the heart, not in the words. What makes a man holy is what he loves, not the word he uses.

At the same time, whether we promote a woman’s alleged right to choose to kill her unborn child or we defend a society’s violation of the most sacred trust given to a bishop, which is to consecrate priests for the Church under the authority of the Vicar of Christ, we are no different from each other. Both actions are equally destructive. The former destroys the life of the unborn child and his mother while the latter is an assault on the life of Christ’s Church.

I think it’s time that people from both sides of the aisle look at our leaders and say with one voice, “Please put a stop to the division. Put a stop to the anger and to the hatred. You are not helping us. Instead, you are killing us.” Very often, when leaders fail to love each other, to listen to each other, to accept each other, and to assume their rightful place in relation to each other, the body must provide assistance, not by becoming polarized, but by uniting in one voice that says, “We accept our differences as gifts of the Holy Spirit. We acknowledge that neither the left nor the right can handcuff the Holy Spirit. We accept that we must let the Spirit loose to do its work and we acknowledge that which we have in common. We ask that our leaders strengthen what we have in common and peacefully discuss the differences. But for the love of all that is good, please leave us out of this discussion. Because when you draw us in, all you ignite the flames of resentment and hurt that we carry within us. We want to smother those flames so that the gentle light of love, serenity, and interior silence can glow once more in our lives.”

Instead of barking at each other, it may be time to unite, not against the Holy See or the leadership of the SSPX, but to address both parties as one people and ask them to do what is necessary to heal our souls and then walk away, leave them alone to do their duty without our interference and our intrusion. The way that we’re carrying on right now is not helping the Holy See or the leadership of the SSPX. We’re only slowing down the healing process.

I’ll tell you what all of this discussion does for me - keeps the question mark alive and well in my mind - who is right and who is wrong? In short, it doesn’t help me at all. I am lost as to where to go at this point, as no matter what forums I look into it is all the same - everyone tenaciously holding to their infallible opinions and castigating the other side.

This isn’t directed at you, Brother Jay, but in reading your post, that is what came to my mind.

I hate to blame much on Satan, but I often think that he is having a great laugh at keeping Catholics at each other’s throat, and away from, and with too little time left to work on, more important matters.

 

[Lormar]

For those who are so inclined, the below link is to a PDF that has a prayer for the canonization of archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

scribd.com/doc/33320603/Archbishop-Marcel-Lefebvre-Prayer-for-his-Canonization-English-and-German

 

[Lormar]

Brother, I sometimes wonder if it is not a spillover from the secular world, at least, for American (as in United States) Catholics. We so readily now divide up in opposing camps, be they conservative, progressive, right wing, liberal, Tea Party, libertarian, just to name a few and then demonize anyone who holds different view from ours. I sense that sometimes it is done to gain a certain intellectual satisfaction or pleasure in vanquishing the opposition and sometimes for more devious motives. Secondly, thanks to the need for cable “news” to fill the air 24/7, talk radio, and especially the internet (case in point ), everyone is now an expert with a firmly held view on practically everything, the facts be damned.

.

I couldn’t agree with you more.

 

[Lormar]

Walter Cronkite could not have said it better.

Do you think that we should reinstate the draft? Maybe, if we reinstate the draft, Americans will come to understand the meaning of these military terms that we like to throw around: Church Militant, Soldier for Christ, Christian Soldiers, Salvation Army, God’s Squad and all the other ones that American Christians use, yet so conveniently redefine.

In a real army you get shot for badmouthing a commanding officer. Soldiers know to keep their mouths shut, to follow orders and to accept whatever comes from above as part of life.

We run our mouths, refuse to follow orders unless they come with God’s initials, and we choose what we accept and what we don’t. How is that being a soldier?

 

[Lormar]

Let’s assume for a moment that the mainstream Church IS a checklist for a protestant sect. Does that give you or anyone the right to publicly denounce it? Is your charity so flawed that you would lash out at a Protestant just because you disagree with the way he was raised in his faith? Jesus never condoned that, as we see in many of his parables. Do you believe you are exempt from demonstrating kindness to draw them into the faith? When does insult, condemnation, belittling ever become justified?

Do you believe this - honestly? That the Church can go wrong when She teaches the faithful? Who’s the Protestant here.

 

[otjm]

I would stop short of saying the current vernacular liturgy is a direct translation of the Latin as many first-year or second-year Latin students would .

Perhaps that is part of our problem: we have far, far too many first-year or second-year Latin students who think they know more than people who have far more training in both languages and theology.

 

[otjm]

It’s good to promote Latin. It’s peculiar to denigrate it in a traditional forum. Or at all.

I looked at my post. I don’t see a problem. When you list the things that perturb traditionalists about mainstream Catholicism, it reads like a checklist for a protestant sect. That is a problem.

No, what is the problem is the narrow-mindedness of those who criticize what is legitimate within the definition of Catholic - a definition, by the way, that comes from the Magisterium.

Then, you have more controversy when some say you must accept this, that or t’other novelty or antiquarianism, otherwise you’re disobedient. When you actually look for logical, doctrinal or traditional support, you realise it’s gossamer-light. Especially if you go back to the source e.g. the reasons for versus-populum, CITH, the all-vernacular mass.

And thereby you dismiss research of scholars far more educated, and far more researched than anyone in these forae, with the simple dismissive characterizations as “novelty”, “antiquarianism” and “gossamer-light” as if there was any substance to those terms. They are simply code language for “I don’t understand this, or I don’t like this, therefore it has no validity”.

Another thing: it’s hard to be objective about your society. You are in it. It forms how you see the world. When you gets deeper into traditionalism and then come into contact again with the mainstream Church, one feels like a foreigner looking local customs.

Part of that problem is the failure to see that what one finds on the local parish level is of necessity a perfect mirror of what Rome teaches. Those who get so deep in traditionalism that they reject the Magisterium of the Church, and identify the Magisterium as something other than the Pope, and the bishops speaking in union with him, are as guilty of wandering away from the truth as someone on the other end of the spectrum who has wandered away from the truth.

And it is just that rejection by both those styling themselves as “traditionalists” and those on the liberal end; they are both cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing what they will qualify as truth. It is bemusing to those who are orthodox in the middle (not “amusing” but rather “bemusing”) as both have gone so far around the bend as to be meeting up on the back side. Both are anal in their own way; both are in utter abhorence of the other end of the spectrum; what unites them is their rejection of those in the middle. And both suffer from the same thought syndrome of “If I were Pope”.

 

[ProVobis]

Who initiated the conflict? Why can’t trads who are on a different side of the fence just leave it be?

When literally billions of churchgoers’ dollars were squandered on razing high altars, communion rails, statues, confessionals, etc. it’s good IMO that someone with a differing opinion stepped up and tried to stop it.

 

[otjm]

But they, even the Catholics who couldn’t afford private schools, went to Mass Sunday after Sunday.

Ah - the old argument.

In about 1957 attendance at church peaked - both for the Catholics and for the mainline Protestants, and both were in the 70%+ range.

The decline, which has been called precipitous after Vatican 2, was anything but. It amounted to between a 1% and 3% drop-off per year until leveling out around 25%.

This has been attributed, of course, to Vatican 2 and what went on after.

There is some validity in attributing it to what went on after, but not for the reasons usually given, as the Protestants have gone through the same drop off; and no one yet has come up with a valid explanation as to why and how changes in the Mass, or the documents of Vatican 2 caused the Protestant drop off.

But then, why let facts get in the way of opinions? It is so much more fun to simply go with the opinions!

 

[Brendan_64]

And yes, people were silent at mass. Thankfully. They learnt by rote? At least they learned! I wonder how many kids today could recite anything from the cathecism on demand?

Perhaps they can’t churn out a few lines of Catechism by rote as they might have done in the past, but they can discuss their faith with better knowledge and with a better, critical understanding of basic Catholic theology. Pupils at school discuss and explore the concepts that underpin their faith these days, they question and think. That is a lot more productive than having them learn catechism and scripture by rote without daring to challenge or criticise a word of it. Do we want thinking Catholics or do we want Catholics who simply recite and nod? I speak as a teacher in a Catholic school.

 

[otjm]

Perhaps they can’t churn out a few lines of Catechism by rote as they might have done in the past, but they can discuss their faith with better knowledge and with a better, critical understanding of basic Catholic theology. Pupils at school discuss and explore the concepts that underpin their faith these days, they question and think. That is a lot more productive than having them learn catechism and scripture by rote without daring to challenge or criticise a word of it. Do we want thinking Catholics or do we want Catholics who simply recite and nod? I speak as a teacher in a Catholic school.

and what you speak of is the difference between the faith of a child and the faith of an adult.

 

[QuestingKnight]

Let’s assume for a moment that the mainstream Church IS a checklist for a protestant sect. Does that give you or anyone the right to publicly denounce it? Is your charity so flawed that you would lash out at a Protestant just because you disagree with the way he was raised in his faith? Jesus never condoned that, as we see in many of his parables. Do you believe you are exempt from demonstrating kindness to draw them into the faith? When does insult, condemnation, belittling ever become justified?

Do you believe this - honestly? That the Church can go wrong when She teaches the faithful? Who’s the Protestant here.

That’s a lot of questions. I can see how the protestant sects have developed since the Reformation. Now they are ordaining women and homosexuals. As a body, they are in serious error. I’m not going to pretend to them as a body, or to individuals, that I condone what they are doing. Its a way for the Devil to separate people from Christ; believe and do most of what Christ wants, just not this one thing. Or seven. fast-forward 500 years and they’ll be dancing in the aisles.

When I was young, the ‘new springtime’ was touted as reviving the Church and making it a friendlier, less severe entity. Something like that.

Imagine my chagrin when I found out these changes were basically what protestants did, from Cranmer onward. They’re not original. The altar table, communion in the hand, vernacular masses, the charismatic ‘renewal’, the ‘new’ hymns that the nuns got us to sing. Not new at all.

Now many Catholics believe contraception is OK, that priests are not special, that sodomites should be pandered to, that mass is more of a communal celebration and thus the host can be handled as at a meal, that most people will be saved. The same as protestants.

No one is teaching the practices that perturb traditionalists. They have tenuous historical support or they start as disobedience and then get an indult but no bishop seems to be preaching their spiritual goodness; they are just being done. That, in itself, is concerning.

You can’t ‘obey’ the having of altar girls or CITH; they’re not actually mandatory!

 

[QuestingKnight]

As for learning by rote: to know anything, you have to remember it. If you can’t remember it, you don’t know it.

To pass exams, I had to use various mnemomic tricks. Talking, reading, discussing, writing essays: not as much help at all.

Here in the UK they’re producing scholars who can’t read, write or do arithmetic properly, after 10 years+ in school. I have the idea that a school which taught in old-fashioned ways would not want for students.

 

[ProVobis]

Perhaps they can’t churn out a few lines of Catechism by rote as they might have done in the past, but they can discuss their faith with better knowledge and with a better, critical understanding of basic Catholic theology. Pupils at school discuss and explore the concepts that underpin their faith these days, they question and think. That is a lot more productive than having them learn catechism and scripture by rote without daring to challenge or criticise a word of it. Do we want thinking Catholics or do we want Catholics who simply recite and nod? I speak as a teacher in a Catholic school.

From the St. Joseph Missal, upon examining your conscience:

First Commandment: Have I willfully doubted or denied my holy religion? Have I taken part in services other than my religion? Have I consulted fortune tellers or read forbidden books or despaired of God’s mercy? Have I neglected to worship God with prayer and the Mass?

When did it change that people can now challenge their faith?

 

[pollycarp]

I’ll tell you what all of this discussion does for me - keeps the question mark alive and well in my mind - who is right and who is wrong? In short, it doesn’t help me at all. I am lost as to where to go at this point, as no matter what forums I look into it is all the same - everyone tenaciously holding to their infallible opinions and castigating the other side.

This isn’t directed at you, Brother Jay, but in reading your post, that is what came to my mind.

I hate to blame much on Satan, but I often think that he is having a great laugh at keeping Catholics at each other’s throat, and away from, and with too little time left to work on, more important matters.

I so feel the same and agree. Satan laughs. The other day when reading the Rule of St. Benedict on the duties of the abbot, he said he should arrange things “so that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from” and I thought of this war. Perhaps God arranged it this way so all can receive the Eucharist despite the liturgy. My friends would not go to Mass if it was in Latin. They’d run. I yearn for everyone to get what I get from the Latin liturgy. (Not calling either weak or strong.)

 

[Thomas_Casey]

MODERATOR NOTE

This is a Catholic apostolate. Whatever the Church allows must be be respected, even when one does not make use of it.

Please refrain from bashing, criticizing, judging or demeaning what the Church allows. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, unless the Church says so.

If you feel the need to attack what the Church allows, please restrain yourself.

Thank You

 

[otjm]

Imagine my chagrin when I found out these changes were basically what protestants did, from Cranmer onward. They’re not original. The altar table, communion in the hand, vernacular masses, the charismatic ‘renewal’, the ‘new’ hymns that the nuns got us to sing. Not new at all.

Yes, but what really takes the cake is that the Protestants themselves got it from the Catholic Church. Altar table - 11th century Catholicism. Vernacular Masses - first four or five centuries of the Church. Communion in the hand - practiced along with CITH up until about 1000 AD and then started again in the 1500’s in the Catholic Church. Charismatic renewal - the history of the Church is replete with the actions of the Holy Spirit. Hymns? Nothing new.

Now many Catholics believe contraception is OK, that priests are not special, that sodomites should be pandered to, that mass is more of a communal celebration and thus the host can be handled as at a meal, that most people will be saved. The same as protestants.

We can all agree catechesis has been poor to non-existent; but that has nothing to do with the issue between the SSPX and Rome.

No one is teaching the practices that perturb traditionalists. They have tenuous historical support or they start as disobedience and then get an indult but no bishop seems to be preaching their spiritual goodness; they are just being done. That, in itself, is concerning.

Perhaps you are only listening to one or two bishops? And I think you did not mean to say "perturb? Your complaint seems to be that no one is teaching the practices that please the traditionalists.

Let’s drag this conversation back to the OP and the letter from the SSPX. Their issue is that they refuse to accept that the documents of Vatican 2 are consistent with prior doctrinal statements of the Church. They are not talking about candlesticks along side the altar or female altar servers. They are talking about doctrine.

And the Pope (Benedict 16) as well as the prior Pope (JP 2) insisted that not only could they be, but that they must be read in continuity with prior doctrinal statements. As far as I have heard, Pope Francis has not weighed in on the matter yet.

That is the essence of the thread. Your comments?

 

[otjm]

From the St. Joseph Missal, upon examining your conscience:

When did it change that people can now challenge their faith?

I don’t know - since this thread is about the SSPX doing that, perhaps they could provide an answer - at least one that doesn’t get back to the so-called emergency clause?

I can understand how some people can make errors in understanding what the Church teaches; we have a 2000 year history of that occurring. What I cannot understand is the SSPX intransigence at accepting what the Holy Father says.

Wait - I just answered it - a lack of obedience of the will. I think Bro. JR nailed it.

 

[pnewton]

Well, this is a forum. There is a debate because there is a problem.
.

This is a forum, but it is a Catholic forum. It is not a Protestant forum or an SSPX forum. I think your statement is untrue. People do not need a “problem” to debate. It is in our base nature to argue over the most mundane things, or even to seek argument for the sake of the fight itself.