Please send me a copy of the PDF file.

 The layman's role in preserving authentic Christian teaching is always on my mind. Christ told us to work while there is still light. If you watched a few minutes of the Demoncratic Convention, you know that time is at hand. Even our own Catholic Joe Biden said that the Supreme Court "will rule" on whether we will take the mark of the Beast. So ok fellow Catholic Cavemen, the Catholic ruling elite only makes me depressed. Time to ditch the negativism and start building all things in Christ who alone gives hope to the world.

p.s.  Thanks again to the SSPX people.

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Here is a fine example of Cathlic education. I don't fault Joe Biden completely. Remember, Joe Biden was molded in the Vatican I era.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd385.htm

JOSEPH BIDEN: LIAR, CHEAT, TRAITOR

 By: Devvy
August 25, 2008

© 2008 - NewsWithViews.com

Who denies that it is preferable that the sheep have shepherds?

The point is that since Vatican II priests generally are either wolves or hired hands or is some sense misguided sheep themselves.

This includes most Traditional priests. Their attitiude towards Rome is perniciously capricious. Time to soften up on Rome to celebrate the Motu? Here's a neat trick. Soften up on the Galilean Rabbi and the truth about Him and defend His "Vicar's" abominable book "Jesus of Nazareth" because its Modernism is far less extreme than Hand Kung's.

What this "Home Aloner" denies is that any Traditionalist or sedevacantist group of priests has any authority to attempt to exercise any kind of authority over anyone. Let them distribute valid sacraments and say sweet things about Jesus and Mary and humbly offer their more or less scholarly opinions about the post-Vatican II situation for what they're worth. If people want to take a deep breath and accept their authority and guidance, so be it. But to say that this obviously risky procedure is the indicated Catholic way all things considered is false.

A lot of Traditionalist priestly "guidance" is based entirely on the ways and means of worldly dirty politics, not on Traditional norm of Doctrine and Spirituality. There is constant total contradiction from year to year, from minute to minute, on what our attitude towards the Novus Ordo and the "Holy Father" should be.

I don't see the point of pointing out the deficiencies of the poor priestless Japanese after centuries of winging it in isolation as Catholics when the deficiency of most Catholic priests nowadays is being harder on Virtue and Faith than the most ruthless shoguns who killed all the priests in Japan.

Maybe my reading skills are deficient today, GV, but I thought that Matthew became aware of the "Mrs" AFTER his original post.

There are only a handful of Traditional Catholic chapels in this country.

In New York State there is one on Long Island and three or four scattered around upstate.

Not ONE in the greatest city in the world.

Just a sort of mission thingie about whose offerings from week to week everyone is unsure.

Most Catholics in this country live well beyond a two hour's drive from any TLM chapel.

We need to can the phony pietistic idealism of Traditionalist pop apologetics. Traditional priests are not standing there in a golden cloud holding the Baby Jesus out to all those proud and callous Home Aloners. They are sitting in the rectory with a long list of "prudent" (or nosey) questions for the prospective chapel member. Some are very interested in what you do for a living. Meaning, how much dough you rake in and how much you might be willng to send their way.

Traditional chapels don't advertise in New York. There is zero "outreach." There is a fly-by-night, off-the-beaten-track quality to them as operations. Intuition screams, "Cult!" Traditional chapels areseem like pretty sad and lonely places.

You seem to have a limited exposure to traditional chapels, or your vast exposure has no overlap with my vast exposure.

The concept of a priest giving out a questionnaire to new parishioners is completely foreign to me.

I also know that the SSPX, by providing the Sacraments to those in need (read: necessity), doesn't pick and choose who it "lets attend". Remember, the SSPX is just part of the Church, and the Church is the net that catches all fishes, good and bad. The "selection" or "sorting" process happens on the last judgment.

Now if a parishioner were actively proselytizing the parishioners to join a cult, protestant group, etc. then something might be done (of course!) But that rarely has to take place.

There are certainly members in the SSPX who harbor sedevacantist tendencies, but as long as they don't try to destroy the SSPX chapel, they are left alone (usually because they are very private about it) But I'm sure they speak about it in the parish hall, etc. and there aren't any spies reporting back to the priest.

Matthew

Normal Catholic life ceased forty-five or so years ago with the Apocalyptic assault on Christ and souls by Mother Rome. Sacrament issues were made much of in order to avoid the real problems: the evil Council that cannot be seen as anything BUT evil in the Light of Tradition and the false popes whose sworn mission it is to impose that evil on every soul in the world in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Dealing with any priests who in any way brought me into communion with Rome was out of the question. Sedevacantists? They can be cagey about what they believe about Rome and communion with it.

My objections to Traditionalism and sedevacantist parochialism are not largely based on personal experience. They are based on common knowledge about the way things are. "No Host or Baby Jesus for YOU because you attended that sedevacantist lecture."

In the old days you just went to church and the priest with authority from a bishop with authority from the Pope wth authority from Christ gave you a sermon in line with not only Common Decency but the Catholic Faith and then he gave you Communion. Period.

Nowadays the standard Traditional priestly MO is to laboriously elicit his opinions on complicated theological issues from the poor layman and then mock and penalize him for what he comes up with. It's very perverse. One may or may not licitly choose to experiment with such an extraordinary clericalistic system. One may not say that that is how the Catholic hierarchical and parochial system was meant to work ordinarily.

I'm not saying that Mass attendance is optional. I'm saying that attendance at the Masses of priests in communion with Rome is absolutely out of the questions and that the proper attitude towards other priestly groups is one of skepticism. Some ninety year old sedevacantist padre who just wants to give souls the Holy Eucharist? I have no reason to look askance at such an interaction even though I can see problems even there.

The problem here is that my basic Catholic paradigm is totally different from that of Traditionalists. Catholics were just going about their ordinary Catholic business forty-five years ago when the Vicar of Christ suddenly thought it would be a swell idea to stamp out Christianity on the face of the earth using his authority from Christ.

I don't think I have any obligation to figure out just how bananas Thuc was. But if he was REALLY bananas, then, maybe, his priests are not really priests at all. No priests, no Mass, no Bread of Angels. It's all so shady and iffy. So incongruous with proper Catholic decorum and degrading to waste a moment's thought on.

How am I to respond to an SSPX adherent who accuses me of being guilty of being an accessory to grand larceny after the fact every time I go to an SSPV chapel?

The proper reaction to this disconcerting and highly objectionable state of Catholic affairs struck hapless Roman semi-loyalists such as Archbishop Lefebvre as "giving up the practice of the faith." The proper reaction was simply to drop out of the Visible Roman Church. He was dead wrong in his judgment about "fallen aways" and that basic wrongness is the basis of all Traditionalist and most sedevacantist discourse on parochial ("You've got to get to Mass, Catholic.") issues.

...it seems we all agree that the author of the PDF is extreme and WRONG in deciding the church isn't visible or doesn't exist...

Have we seen any quotes that definitively demonstrate that such is her belief?  Or are we just dealing with a situation where a human being is at a loss as to how such complete devastation could have occurred, almost overnight, and what to do now?  

The present situation - no matter what explanation you presently consider accurate - is so MONUMENTAL and UNPRECEDENTED, and we are ALL groping in the dark to one extent or another, it seems OBVIOUS that we should give MUCH MORE latitude than we are accustomed to give.  Honestly, I think the UTTER LACK of latitude granted to others, whilst we grant OURSELVES latitude all day long and in the EXTREME, is precisely what turns non-Catholic and Novus Ordo people off to trads, and turns trads off with respect to each other.  It is the Pharisaical phenomenon - "Splinters, splinters everywhere, but I don't see no beam!"

People relocate for more frequent access to the Sacraments, yet they often were making MUCH MORE spiritual progress in their former situation.  Bloom where you are planted, even if there is no Mass within an hour's drive.  God does not NEED the Sacraments to give grace to anyone.

And yet the Sacraments should not be "given 2nd place" lightly. They ARE the ordinary means of salvation.

Christ didn't institute them (as well as the visible Church with its group worship of God) because He was bored one day. He did so very much on purpose.

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all else shall be added unto you besides."

What else could the advice of Jesus POSSIBLY mean? If it doesn't mean "move where there's Mass, worry about food/clothing/shelter afterwards", then I don't know what it could mean.

Matthew