Thank you for the profound insight, verbatim SSPX-isms and all.

Anyone with a brain would also see it thus.  The vulgar way of putting it would be...NO SH*T!

While your ability to repeat the SSPX party line is most impressive and entertaining, sort of like sitting in a room with a well-trained parakeet, it is plain that you do not intend to think seriously before giving a substantial answer to the matter at hand.  Good day.

The "vulgar" way of saying that would be, "Dulcamara, you don't agree with me so YOU'RE STUPID!" ... with or without sticking your tongue out at me afterward. Which is about as mature as that statement.

Apparently anyone who doesn't agree with you, or who happens to have come to the same conclusion as the SSPX, "has no intention of using their brains." I suppose this has been the position of a good many people in a great many debates throughout history where you have two parties sitting radically on opposite sides of an issue. At some point it becomes clear that the other side isn't going to change their minds, and suddenly, "they're just stupid."

Well isn't that convenient? How about that... He who doesn't agree is just stupid... Well, actually there are few sides of any debate where the people are just stupid. Usually they're ignorant (not in possession of certain facts), proud, confused, misinformed, etc... but hardly ever stupid. (Except maybe the folks who hang out in remote places waiting for aliens to make contact.)

Anyone who has bothered actually taking the time to get off of their high seat as judge of the pope, condescend to read the humble writings of certain archbishops and bishops, and other books where all of the points of cannon law and what have you are considered and laid out all very nicely, or... if you consider a 'lowly' archbishop or bishop much too much beneath the dignity of the almighty and genius laity, at least defer to church doctrine and dogma and law which you can read presented by even some secular writers who perhaps, being more like yourself, you may respect more... you might then actually reconsider your position.

Having read them, had them read to me incessantly by someone else who reads them, and having the whole thing pounded into my head in full to the minutest dogmatic and legal detail by someone who, I think, eats, sleeps and breathes this church crisis and the truth of the matter... whose own head, I might add, is full of some of the finest minds secular and otherwise to docuмent the horror from just about any angle you want to discuss (no, I don't mean everyone in the SSPX)... I myself could not possibly have failed to "think deeply" about it. I hear about virtually nothing else, whenever there is conversation in my home. I could start a conversation on the whether and ten minutes later be discussing the theological teachings and errors of this or that churchman. But finally it comes down to this... if the law reads one way, or the theology reads thus, or the dogma is such and such... well... there it is. Either you, as a Catholic, can accept it, or you can do the protestant thing, and just kind of take it however makes you feel smart and important, and... let's not forget the most important point of all... what makes YOU "right".

And before you get started, no, I'm not saying I am right. I'm saying that the truth is right, and whoever finds it is right. People are never right because they're so great. They're right because they happened to find the truth when they went looking for it. The truth is the great thing, not the "right" people. The right people are no more great for happening to be right, than Hawaii is great for happening to be green, because it just happens to exist in the conditions it does. Truth is not an issue of pride. It's and issue of what simply IS. It's error that's the issue of pride, and those who are in it are always great... greatly mistaken and great fools.

Well... if you enjoy reading dogma, theology and cannon law, and then going out and doing whatever is most comfortable for you, then hey... why not go along with Vatican II for that matter? It would be easy, and make about as much sense. Or you can take the other route, where you are your own pope, or the elector of your own pope, and the judge of the pope and all churchmen... your own, private, one-man inquisition... and join the $3d3 crowd. But what is right, what is true, often lies, very painfully (for our personal pride and high opinion of ourselves,) somewhere in-between two very flattering extremes (one extreme in this case to indifference... it's nice and easy, after all, not to have to think at all... or the other, total pride, setting yourself up as judge, jury and executioner against the pope and all churchmen, quite like Luther, only without making up a new name for your own church or religion).

USUALLY, I repeat, the truth is somewhere in-between the two. Something that requires humility. Something that will not be easy, fun, pleasant, or nice on the ego or pride. Something, in fact, that most often calls for that which most of us are purely allergic to: humility. Willingness to suffer. Willingness to get the mud and the (excuse my earthy language) crap thrown on us step by grueling step as we walk, together with our Lord, carrying that cross we like so much to run away from in whatever direction that seems easiest. If we're with Vatican II we escape it by simply betraying Christ and His church, and agreeing to passively go down with the ship, because it's easy, and we don't want to do anything that isn't easy. If we go the $3d3 route, we get the glee and pleasure of seeing ourselves as giants of intellect among ants! Those who "know better" than to follow that _fill in what you think of the pope here_. Those who won't recognize the office (and share in it's disgrace) because they can't stand the man. Those who say, "I know not the man."

Oh how easy either one of those alternatives would be. Oh how much more difficult and humiliating, to belong to that church which is, right now, being utterly degraded, humiliated, torn to pieces... suffering in short what Christ suffered in his torture and death on the cross... How much harder it is to stand up like men (or women as the case may be) and go down that street, and have the crap thrown at OUR face, and the mud, and be scourged and ridiculed, and condemned by the world around us!

No, it's not fun. It's much nicer to think ourselves not responsible for where we end up (indifference) or too great-minded to join in and suffer such a degrading spectacle. It isn't nice. It doesn't pet the pride until you see yourself as a genius among idiots. It's humiliating. It hurts. It's degrading. Like Our Lord was humiliated, hurt and degraded. Which is, perhaps, the best sign that it is, in fact the right course. Those who escape the suffering of the cross flee from it cowards. Those who pretend they're above it throw it down in disdain. But how ironic is it, that the true Catholics are the ones who are willing to be humiliated, condemned, ridiculed for and with the church as Christ was Himself? How very fitting that those who want to partake of His kingdom, are made so closely to partake of His humiliations? And made to do so as HE did so... with humility. Meekly. Willingly. Eagerly even, thirsting as He thirsted to suffer according to the will of the Father.

When you look at it that way, it all becomes very clear. Say what you will, but to deny the pope smacks of pride. To have your faith taken away and do nothing smacks of cowardice. To walk the most ignominious road a Catholic can walk... to be condemned and denied even by one's own, to suffer the shame and humiliation of belonging to that church whose superiors are doing such shameful and un-catholic things, and yet to cling to that Church as Christ did to the cross... you might say, to be crucified by and to it... now there's a path with which we all ought to be familiar. It is the way of the cross, and Our Lord is there on it.

And to point out that there is nothing but suffering down this road... If you're with Vatican II, you're loved, accepted and praised by those who are also in it. If you are $3d3, you are hailed as an intellectual who had the brains to get out of that "disgraceful mess" and join the ranks of other intelligent, enlightened men. But if you are "traditionalist" ... if you keep the faith AND the Vicar... not only will you enjoy (...yay...) suffering all the humility of belonging to the Church as it is, but you will also get crucified by your fellow self-proclaimed traditional Catholics (the $3d3s and novus folk). You will find, in fact, no source of personal gratification here... except the cross, the truth and the sacraments. And maybe... MAYBE a few members of your own family, if you're lucky.

There's no room for pride in this choice. Just your 'fiat' before you join Our Lord on the cross of disgrace, with all the humiliation and pain it entails.

So the Vatican II Pentecost ISN"T a disgraceful mess? :confused1:

I am beginning to get Dulc a little clearer. Thank you Cletus--The 'world' definitly does treat **** Catholics with contempt. We are hardly a part of 'the enlightened' in the modern sense; the v2 ers are the 'enlightened'

With the excep of Ben XIII, I really don't see any Popes whose competence I would even question bet Pius V and X. As far as nepotism, although there has been embarrassments in this area in the past there have also been more than a few examples of this working out just fine.

There are none the less many(and I would say this is usually the case) good examples of nepotism.

The following words of Archbishop Lefebvre still make sense nearly thirty years after he said them. "The visibility of the Church is too necessary to its existence for it to be possible that God would allow that visibility to disappear for decades. The reasoning of those who deny that we have a pope puts the Church into an inextricable situation. Who will tell us who the future pope is to be? How, as there are no cardinals, is he to be chosen? The spirit is a schismatical one. . . . And so, far from refusing to pray for the Pope, we redouble our prayers and supplications that the Holy Ghost will grant him the light and strength in his affirmations and defense of the Faith."

For the sake of argument, lets assume I am a 'sede'. 'Sedes' do more than try and show that real Popes could not poss be guilty of the actions of these v2 anti-popes. We also point out that these v2 'popes' were not even legally elected as Card Siri actually was: therefore there are two ways the v2 'popes' can be shown to be anti-popes.

Cletus--Alex VI had Cesare and Paul IV had Carlo. Benedict XIII had Niccolo Coscia. Source--von Pastor v35

I can only speak for myself and my 'Sede' theory does include the Siri election.

There is no way that 'all' the Supreme Pontiffs 'might' have someone like a Cesare, Carlo or Coscia.  The latter was not a relative of Ben XIII, he was just a bad choice--nepotsm doesn't apply here.

I was just trying to illustrate why Ben XIII might be considered a Pope of questionable abilities. I did not say he was a bad Pope. To me there is no problem with any of the Popes beg from Pius IV through Pius X with the exception of Ben XIII