Usefulness of SSPX to the Church

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ChristMyLife

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So what’s your opinion CAF?

IMO, the SSPX is direly needed IN the Church. I believe the Church very badly needs their influence to swing the pendulum back closer to the traditional side.

However, I see the SSPX stubbornly refusing to come into full communion with the Church, and thus relegate themselves to the periphery and so minimize the actual influence they have on the Church.

Personally, in the situation that exists right now, you wouldn’t catch me dead in an SSPX Chapel - I wouldn’t even go on an SSPX website or order a book from SSPX publisher. I will not support them in any way at all (except by prayer) until they normalize their situation.

If they DID normalize their situation, I would unequivocally support them in every possible way.

I am deeply dissapointed in the SSPX because I see them as an asset the Church needs, but I also see their pride is keeping them from doing what needs to be done.

So how many on CAF believes the Church needs the SSPX, and longs for them to regularize their canonical status and be in full communion with the Church?

How many others are like me, and would fully support them if they were regular, yet won’t even give the appearance of support in their current situation?
 
ChristMyLife said:
the SSPX is direly needed IN the Church
I believe the Church very badly needs their influence to swing the pendulum back closer to the traditional side.
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I do agree that the church does need a strong traditional influence that will support return to orthodoxy. The spirit of vatican II has ravaged the Church, and we are just now recovering a firm catechesis and praxis in many areas.
ChristMyLife said:
I see the SSPX stubbornly refusing to come into full communion with the Church, and thus relegate themselves to the periphery and so minimize the actual influence they have on the Church.
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We all need to pray and work for unity. The different aspects of the Body must listen to one another and find ways to overcome our differences. Stubbornness is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. But I don’t understand what you think is lacking for “full communion”?
ChristMyLife said:
Personally, in the situation that exists right now, you wouldn’t catch me dead in an SSPX Chapel -
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Learning what others believe is not the same as supporting them. If we don’t understand the basis of our differences, it is harder to heal. Remember that they exist in the first place because they have the same attitude toward the Novus Ordo.
 
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ChristMyLife said:
How many others are like me, and would fully support them if they were regular, yet won’t even give the appearance of support in their current situation?
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I definitely would fully support them if they regularized. I hope that happens someday. Although I wouldn’t call myself a traditionalist, most of my closest Catholic friends are (and some of them go to SSPX occasionally), so I have a good amount of affinity and understanding towards their position.

I can’t say I’d go so far as to draw the hard line you do right now, but also I’ve never had the opportunity to be involved with them, so it just hasn’t come up (I almost went to a conference of theirs once with one of said Catholic friends, but our trip fell through).
 
I’m exactly like your ending sentiment. I sympathize with them. I agree with them, I envy them, and yet… they need to come into the fold. However, under the current Church scandals and turbulence politically they might be wise to sit and wait a little while longer .
Plus if they came into the fold some people would not know who to hate anymore…
 
ChristMyLife said:
I believe the Church very badly needs their influence to swing the pendulum back closer to the traditional side.
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I disagree. I think there’s plenty of that as is without another group carrying that banner.

We should pray for the reunification of all Christians, but to say one flavor is needed more than another… no.
 
Hoosier-Daddy said:
Plus if they came into the fold some people would not know who to hate anymore
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“At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint”
Pope BXVI

http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedi...en-xvi_let_20090310_remissione-scomunica.html
 
People repeat errors all the time. Repetition does not make something true. Another poster in another thread claims that: According to Canon 751 of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law and paragraph 2089 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
Does not the SSPX refuse to submit to the Supreme Pontiff in several areas? Or are they in complete accord and in complete submission to the Supreme Pontiff?
 
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I think that the SSPX would be useful to the Church if they were in full communion with he rest of the Church.
 
The SSPX is irregular and disobedient. Until they become regular and obedient, I want no part of anything they offer.

I’m not even sure what the route to regularity and obedience would look like for them. What I see from the outside is a lot of spiritual pride and ego that gets in the way of the organization and her priests submitting to the Holy See without conditions.
 
40 years ago, SSPX clergy had far more training and experience in the a diocese, alongside various religious orders, under an Ordinary, than they do now. It’s likely they still had many friends remaining in the diocese, who they could agree or argue with.

Today, that connection is disappearing. Most young clergy rarely had any teachers or mentors with Diocesan experience. Those who grew up in SSPX chapels perhaps lack any background even as laity in a diocesan parish.
The SSPX today is more connected to the Church than the Old Catholic movement, but less connected - less of an influence - than SSPX itself was a few decades ago. This affects “usefulness”.
 
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In my city, some Traditional Catholics attend diocesan approved TLM. They (we) are working in some diocesan activities, especially prolife. We set up an independent Catholic school, with permission of the bishop but not under the diocese.
We have some influence on some parishes. The SSPX has none.
The SSPX chapel is no doubt prolife, but they are absent from diocesan efforts in this, or any other area. It’s hard to see how the chapel is more useful, when the members have so little relationship to the local Church.

If their usefulness is based on being “independent”, then the Resistance would be even more “useful”.
 
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Bobby87 said:
Today, we often hear talk of ‘ecumenism’ and ‘tolerance’; charity, botherly love. Why is this never applied to Traditional Catholics?
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I’ve heard this several times, but to be honest, I don’t see that. This is what I feel I’ve seen:

Vatican: come to the Church, SSPX brethren, we love you, we need you, won’t you come sup with us?

SSPX: Hissss away with ye modernist!

That’s what I feel the attitudes I’ve seen are.

As far as I know, the Vatican has an open arms policy, ready to accept the SSPX, all the SSPX has to do is agree to the orthodoxy of VII and the reformed Roman Rite.

And the SSPX essentially puts unreasonable demands on the Vatican.

I’ll tell you this: if a repudiation of VII and reversion of the Rite to the Tridentine form is what it’ll take for the SSPX to be in the fold - even a thousand years from now they’ll still be “irregular.”

However, if they were IN the fold, they could work a lot more at maybe getting the Magisterium to clarify doctrinal issues arising from the VII documents, as well as work towards a reform of the Roman Rite.

But as they sit now on the periphery, they remain a bastion of hardcore, disillusioned traditionalists, and far away from any association with faithful Catholic traditionalists.

There’s been like 6 people in this thread alone who admit they’d be SSPX supporters if they were in the fold, yet wouldn’t touch them with a 39 and a half foot pole in their current situation, myself included.
 
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Bobby87 said:
think it is this sort of realism that is understood by the SSPX clergy and superiors, that has allowed them to look at the real issues in the present situation in the Church. They perhaps see it more important to keep doing their daily duty and trying to do what they can to help
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Temporary measures have a way of becoming permanent. Organizations set up to address a crisis keep finding new reasons to justify the continuing organization. The organization becomes an end in itself. More and more of its time and resources go to the goal of justifying it’s separate existence, its separate “help”.
 
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commenter said:
More and more of its time and resources go to the goal of justifying it’s separate existence, its separate “help”.
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I agree.

The SSPX actually reminds me a lot of what I’ve seen from some Eastern Orthodox people I’ve interacted with.

I say “well, if the Church does this this and this, will you reconcile?” and they reply “those things are great, but then they need to address that that and that” and it just goes on and on. I’ve literally seen Eastern Orthodox come up with a list of 30 things the Church needs to change, and end it by saying “maybe if those things were done we’d consider uniting.” Totally, utterly unreasonable. It shows they don’t truly desire unity in their heart. If they did, they’d be willing to make reasonable concessions as a sacrifice for the greater good of unity.

Some people don’t want unity. It appears some just revel in division. A sad aspect of our fallen human nature.
 
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