He attends FSSP, but he is an intelligent and holy young man, working for students in Denver.
Well, let's pray that he receives the grace of conversion before death.
I'M KIDDING! :)
It's a good example of what I mean though.
I personally consider the FSSP to be overall a very compromised group. But the individuals in the group are obviously Catholic! They are very conservative Catholics, certainly in possession of the Catholic Faith.
About the FSSP:
Traditional Catholics, from the very beginning, have held 3 essential principles:
1. Leave the Conciliar Church and Novus Ordo behind completely, regardless of having a Trad option lined up for Mass. Stay home on Sunday if no Tridentine Mass available.
2. Seek out SURE sacraments in "lifeboats": valid priests to offer both the Tridentine Mass and traditional Sacraments, and support them wherever they are, even at independently set up "Traditional chapels" which Rome considers "illicit" or "un-canonical". Treat them for all practical purposes like one's local parish.
3. Believe "I don't need permission from the Pope, or Modernist Rome, to stay Catholic". That is, believe in supplied jurisdiction for Mass and ALL sacraments, and have NO scruples about attaching oneself to, and fully supporting, such Trad chapels and building them up.
Those elements are common to 100% of Traditional Catholics. Anyone who scruples about going to Confession to a Trad priest because he doesn't have official jurisdiction or faculties from the local Bishop, for example, is not a Trad. He might be conservative, but if he doesn't understand that Catholics have a right to keep their Faith, and a need for the Sacraments, they have a lot to learn and therefore are not yet "Traditional Catholic".
Enter the FSSP:
Since part of their essence is "approval/permission from Rome" they are technically not Trad, since such approval was not part of the Trad package from the beginning. But more importantly, it
actually contradicts principle #3, above. From the beginning of the movement in the 1970's, getting permission from Rome was certainly NOT one of the elements of the Traditional movement. So the FSSP is a new kind of conservative Catholic at best ("Indult Catholic"? "Latin Mass Catholic"?).
While Sedevacantists ALSO added another element to the Traditional manifesto, "4. The putative pope is not pope at all.", this is different in two main ways:
1. A good number of Trads believed this from the beginning. It was there, just not universal. So they are a specific sub-type of Trad, rather than SOMETHING OTHER THAN Trad.
2. Their additional belief doesn't contradict Trad principles 1-3.