Author Topic: End to the State of Necessity (Read 4202 times)

Matthew · « **Reply #60 on:** January 07, 2026, 12:04:56 PM »

Quote from: Centroamerica on January 07, 2026, 11:17:25 AM

You or any Latin Rite Resistance priest or bishop. Their arguments do not hold water if you truly learn the East, which takes a lifetime.

That is insane to me.

We're not talking about timeless things like Truth, Goodness or Beauty -- but "East". Guess what? I'm not from the East. I'm 100% Western. I grew up at a Traditional Catholic (Roman Rite) chapel. I am a native born American citizen, born in the Midwest. My heritage is Irish and German, and other misc. European. NO PART OF ME is Eastern.

God doesn't expect hippos to live among hyenas, and He doesn't expect me to join some culture that is 100% foreign to me -- as a requirement of keeping my Faith.

Why do you think I'm pro-Roman Rite? Because I was surfing the web and clicked that link instead of the Eastern Rite link next to it? NO!
I was RAISED that way by my elders -- my parents, teachers, uncles, etc. The way God designed it. Faith comes by hearing. And physical, human teachers are the way God intended for us to learn. It's why He gave us parents.

Saying things like "learn the East" that "takes a lifetime" reeks of fetishizing the East, which so many white men have done. Some have gone overseas to find spouses, others to pursue their curiosity (various Eastern medicine, philosophy, martial arts, etc.) But in the end, it's just a fetish. It's kind of crazy when you stop and think about it. Behold the 6 foot tall, or muscular/stocky middle aged white guy hanging out in Thailand with a bunch of short skinny Asians, pretending to be Asian. And white guys can be smart, so they do a good job of learning the language and culture. But what went wrong? Why did he reject his own culture and identity? What crisis happened in the man's life, to make him change his "identity" so drastically? In the end, regardless of the circuмstances, It's not natural or normal.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #61 on:** January 07, 2026, 12:13:02 PM »

Quote from: Matthew on January 07, 2026, 12:04:56 PM

That is insane to me.

We're not talking about timeless things like Truth, Goodness or Beauty -- but "East". Guess what? I'm not from the East. I'm 100% Western. I grew up at a Traditional Catholic (Roman Rite) chapel. I am a native born American citizen, born in the Midwest. My heritage is Irish and German, and other misc. European. NO PART OF ME is Eastern.

God doesn't expect hippos to live among hyenas, and He doesn't expect me to join some culture that is 100% foreign to me -- as a requirement of keeping my Faith.

Why do you think I'm pro-Roman Rite? Because I was surfing the web and clicked that link instead of the Eastern Rite link next to it? NO!
I was RAISED that way by my elders -- my parents, teachers, uncles, etc. The way God designed it.

Saying things like "learn the East" that "takes a lifetime" reeks of fetishizing the East, which so many white men have done. Some have gone overseas to find spouses, others to pursue their curiosity (various Eastern medicine, philosophy, martial arts, etc.) But in the end, it's just a fetish. It's kind of crazy when you stop and think about it. Behold the 6 foot tall, or muscular/stocky middle aged white guy hanging out in Thailand with a bunch of short skinny Asians, pretending to be Asian. And white guys can be smart, so they do a good job of learning the language and culture. But what went wrong? Why did he reject his own culture and identity? What crisis happened in the man's life, to make him change his "identity" so drastically? In the end, regardless of the circuмstances, It's not natural or normal.

Matthew, I know you are a balanced thinker, and I’m going to answer this plainly and honestly, not rhetorically.

When I say “learn the East,” I am not talking about ethnicity, race, fetish, cosplay, or identity substitution, and I think you know that. I am talking about an ecclesial tradition with its own theological grammar, historical memory, and mode of receiving doctrine that is not interchangeable with the Latin resistance framework you and I were both formed in. This has nothing to do with rejecting one’s culture, and everything to do with recognizing that the Catholic Church is not identical to the post-Tridentine Latin experience, especially in how crises are endured.

I am not Eastern by blood, language, or upbringing either. I was raised in the same Latin resistance ecosystem you were, and I took it seriously enough to live inside it, test it, and push its claims to their logical conclusions. What broke my confidence was not attraction to novelty or aesthetics, but the realization that Latin resistance arguments quietly universalize a very specific Western crisis psychology and then judge the rest of the Church by whether it mirrors that posture.

The East does not defend the faith primarily through denunciatory docuмents, polemical manifestos, or juridical theories of emergency. Historically it never has. It preserves doctrine through continuity of worship, ascetical theology, episcopal praxis, and above all through what it refuses to absorb. That is not silence as indifference. That is non-reception as a lived ecclesial act. Those two things are not morally or theologically identical.

Calling this fetishization misses the point entirely. I am not saying the East is superior because it is exotic. I am saying it exposes the limits of a Latin resistance model that assumes the only faithful response to crisis is constant public condemnation in a particular register. That assumption is not catholic. It is cultural.

You ask why someone would “reject his own culture.” I am not rejecting the West. I am rejecting the idea that Western modes of crisis management are the sole measure of fidelity. The Church survived Arianism, monothelitism, iconoclasm, and imperial coercion largely through endurance, non-assimilation, and liturgical fidelity, not through every bishop issuing constant denunciations on demand.

If the Eastern Churches had truly accepted doctrinal rupture, you would see it prayed, catechized, and sacramentally enacted. You do not. Their liturgy did not absorb Vatican II’s ambiguities. Their theology did not internalize Latin innovations. Their moral life did not collapse into pastoral experimentation. That matters more than press conferences or public statements.

This is not escapism. It is not identity play. It is recognizing that the Catholic Church is larger than the Latin crisis and older than our arguments about it. I am not asking you to become Eastern. I am asking you to acknowledge that your framework is not exhaustive, and that fidelity does not always wear the same armor.

If that sounds uncomfortable, it should. Crises always expose the limits of our categories.

Matthew · « **Reply #62 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:04:57 PM »

I also would like to have a sane balanced discussion of the matter.

A few points:

1. How could God, you, or anyone else expect me to operate outside the framework, culture, and way of looking at the world that I was formed in? How am I supposed to magically replace my very BIOS, my Operating system, plus all the software that's been installed on me over the past half-century? That is not reasonable to expect. You're not talking about learning a new trick, but a new way of criticism, a new way of thinking, a new worldview, being Eastern instead of Western, etc. That is not a small change, like learning a new language. Again, I would say that is NOT NATURAL.

2. There is question of what you mean by doing the "Traditional Catholic" thing. Specifically, the more bitter zeal variety, vs. the "keep the Faith" and be holy variety. There are a lot of Trads who can't see the forest for the trees, and I wouldn't be surprised if that led to nothing good -- including giving up on the Traditional Movement.
I would wager you haven't been in the best Traditional Catholic circles, and/or you're disillusioned with what you've seen, having moved beyond the ideals and seen a lot of "how the sausage is made" and discovered the "warts and all" -- hoping that the East isn't as bad. But someday you might become disillusioned with the East, and then heaven help you. Beware the long-game of the devil... he just wants to get you, he doesn't care how...

3. You seem to contrast the Roman Rite as being bitter and denouncing, vs. the East just "keeping the liturgy pristine" and "busy over here staying Catholic". Well guess what? My Traditional Catholic chapel is "just keeping the Faith" as well. Our liturgy is 100% consonant with the Catholic Faith, with no corruptions or Modernism. So what advantage do the Eastern Rites have again?

4. As for where our salvation will ultimately come from -- you are welcome to your opinion, as this is classic "doubtful matter". Anything touching on the Crisis is automatically doubtful and NOT dogmatic.

As God is the author of Nature, and God cannot contradict Himself, I can't imagine a world where we're expected to "change our spots" and become something completely other, in order to restore the Church and/or keep the Faith. God isn't going to require the impossible, or the unnatural.

Matthew · « **Reply #63 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:20:05 PM »

Are you sure you want to include the Maronite as one of your ideals? They are extremely liberal. Their churches look like typical average Novus Ordo, with banners and all.

Here is a screenshot from a Maronite church in San Antonio.

Nice how the "youth minister" is a woman, as well as the choir director. Funny how the Maronites also fall under the American curse of "boys don't sing" -- even though that isn't true pretty much everywhere else in the world -- including Lebanon, which is where the Maronites are from

Next photo:
Note they call him "St. John Paul II". That shows how liberal and Modernist-infected they are.
Also note where the church's parishioners came from -- "Lebanon and middle eastern countries". Which is understandable for them. But not for a white boy born in the Midwest USA to a Roman Rite Trad Catholic family.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #64 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:26:59 PM »

Quote from: Matthew on January 07, 2026, 01:20:05 PM

Are you sure you want to include the Maronite as one of your ideals? They are extremely liberal. Their churches look like typical average Novus Ordo, with banners and all.

Here is a screenshot from a Maronite church in San Antonio.

Nice how the "youth minister" is a woman, as well as the choir director. Funny how the Maronites also fall under the American curse of "boys don't sing" -- even though that isn't true pretty much everywhere else in the world -- including Lebanon, which is where the Maronites are from

Next photo:
Note they call him "St. John Paul II". That shows how liberal and Modernist-infected they are.
Also note where the church's parishioners came from -- "Lebanon and middle eastern countries". Which is understandable for them. But not for a white boy born in the Midwest USA to a Roman Rite Trad Catholic family.

I’m aware of the Maronites being liberal. There’s all kinds of craziness out there. I was talking about the protections I experienced in the Byzantine. I should not conflate the East with the Byzantine rite.

Matthew · « **Reply #65 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:27:42 PM »

I had so many points to make, I forgot the most important one!

5. You seem to be giving up on the Traditional Movement. You are making the same error as Bishop Fellay, worrying about the future, "how we can continue fighting as we have been", feeling like you can't fight much longer, and losing heart.

Bp. Fellay actually said this explicitly. He said we are going to end up like the Old Catholics if we don't change course and do something different.

Your path (I read your pedigree/bio a couple pages back) and to some that might seem extremely well-rounded. But to me, I think maybe you got poisoned by the *kind of* sedevacantists you were hanging out with.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #66 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:28:16 PM »

Some of the Rites out of India are probably worse. I’m really just talking Byzantine versus Latin.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #67 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:35:26 PM »

Quote from: Matthew on January 07, 2026, 01:04:57 PM

I also would like to have a sane balanced discussion of the matter.

A few points:

1. How could God, you, or anyone else expect me to operate outside the framework, culture, and way of looking at the world that I was formed in? How am I supposed to magically replace my very BIOS, my Operating system, plus all the software that's been installed on me over the past half-century? That is not reasonable to expect. You're not talking about learning a new trick, but a new way of criticism, a new way of thinking, a new worldview, being Eastern instead of Western, etc. That is not a small change, like learning a new language. Again, I would say that is NOT NATURAL.

2. There is question of what you mean by doing the "Traditional Catholic" thing. Specifically, the more bitter zeal variety, vs. the "keep the Faith" and be holy variety. There are a lot of Trads who can't see the forest for the trees, and I wouldn't be surprised if that led to nothing good -- including giving up on the Traditional Movement.
I would wager you haven't been in the best Traditional Catholic circles, and/or you're disillusioned with what you've seen, having moved beyond the ideals and seen a lot of "how the sausage is made" and discovered the "warts and all" -- hoping that the East isn't as bad. But someday you might become disillusioned with the East, and then heaven help you. Beware the long-game of the devil... he just wants to get you, he doesn't care how...

3. You seem to contrast the Roman Rite as being bitter and denouncing, vs. the East just "keeping the liturgy pristine" and "busy over here staying Catholic". Well guess what? My Traditional Catholic chapel is "just keeping the Faith" as well. Our liturgy is 100% consonant with the Catholic Faith, with no corruptions or Modernism. So what advantage do the Eastern Rites have again?

4. As for where our salvation will ultimately come from -- you are welcome to your opinion, as this is classic "doubtful matter". Anything touching on the Crisis is automatically doubtful and NOT dogmatic.

As God is the author of Nature, and God cannot contradict Himself, I can't imagine a world where we're expected to "change our spots" and become something completely other, in order to restore the Church and/or keep the Faith. God isn't going to require the impossible, or the unnatural.

Matthew, I’m going to slow this down because I think you’re reading my position through a lens that doesn’t actually fit it.

First, I am not “giving up on the Traditional Movement,” nor am I losing heart, nor am I looking for an escape hatch because things are hard. I stayed in this fight a long time. I’ve been inside SSPX, Resistance, Williamson circles, CMRI, and sede circles long enough to see not just the ideals but the internal logic and the long-term consequences of each position. This isn’t fatigue. It’s analysis.

Second, I am not contrasting “bitter Romans” versus “holy Easterners.” That’s a caricature. I know plenty of Roman Rite traditionalists who are sincerely keeping the Faith, and I’ve said that repeatedly. The question isn’t whether a given chapel is valid or whether a given priest is sincere. The question is structural and ecclesiological: what actually preserves the Faith over time when a crisis lasts longer than a generation.

You say your chapel is just keeping the Faith, and I believe you. But the problem is not individual fidelity in the short term. The problem is sustainability across time without collapsing into either sectarianism or perpetual emergency governance. The Roman Resistance model requires constant denunciation, constant boundary policing, constant jurisdictional improvisation, and perpetual crisis language. That works for a while. Historically, it does not work indefinitely.

That’s where you and I diverge.

You frame the East as something “other,” almost as if I’m proposing people reinvent themselves culturally or ethnically. That’s not what’s happening. I didn’t “become Eastern” in the sense you’re describing. I didn’t reject my identity, culture, or formation. I recognized that the Church already contains multiple apostolic rites with intact theology, intact sacramental life, and a lived continuity that predates the modern Roman administrative framework entirely.

This is not exoticism or fetishism. It’s ecclesiology.

The Eastern Churches did not survive by being louder than Rome. They survived by not absorbing Roman doctrinal volatility into their worship, catechesis, and spiritual psychology. That is not silence-as-cowardice. It is non-reception as a lived reality. Those are not the same thing.

Your Nestorius example actually proves the point you think it refutes. Nestorius was condemned because he taught heresy as doctrine and attempted to impose it ecclesially. Vatican II did not define dogma in that way. Even you have explicitly said this distinction matters. Once you concede that, the East’s posture is no longer incoherent. They are not obligated to behave as if a dogmatic definition occurred when even Rome itself denies that one did.

As for denunciations, history simply does not support the idea that every bishop, everywhere, must publicly polemicize every crisis at all times or else be suspect. That standard would have condemned vast portions of the Church during Arianism, Iconoclasm, and multiple papal crises. The Church distinguishes between assent, toleration, non-reception, and resistance. You are collapsing those categories into one because it fits the Resistance model, not because history demands it.

You warn me about becoming disillusioned with the East someday. Fair enough. I’m not naive. But what I see in the East is not a movement fueled by outrage or sustained by emergency rhetoric. I see a Church that already knows how to survive imperial pressure, bad bishops, confused hierarchs, and long winters without redefining itself every decade.

Finally, when you say God would not require us to “change our spots,” I agree completely. That’s precisely why I’m not convinced the solution is perpetual Roman crisis management. God already provided multiple apostolic lungs. We didn’t invent them. We just forgot they existed.

I’m not abandoning Tradition. I’m asking whether we’ve mistaken one particular Roman strategy for the only way the Church can breathe.

If you want to argue that point, I’m happy to. But framing this as loss of heart, poisoning, or capitulation misses what I’m actually saying.

Matthew · « **Reply #68 on:** January 07, 2026, 01:55:07 PM »

I think I understand your position, but you're still worrying above your pay grade. It is not for us to sit in ivory towers and think everything through to its "logical conclusion" and speed up time that way. That is how angels think. But they don't miss various points either. When a *man* speeds things up that way, it's just a distortion because he is forgetting countless facets as he moves the slider all the way to the end to "see what happens" or "how it turns out".

It is not for us to figure out how to solve the Crisis -- only to keep the Faith today and this year. One day at a time. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."

I do stand by my previous statement, that thinking like this ("I'm just taking this to its logical conclusion") leads to Bp. Fellay doing a 180 on the SSPX position on Vatican II, because he decided what we're doing isn't working, that the Traditional Movement has an expiration date, and that we're going to end up schismatic if we keep going down our current path.

I say: no we're not. Are you intending to be schismatic today? No. Why would you suddenly turn from God tomorrow? If Tradition was good enough for our fathers, it's good enough for me, and good enough for my children. Moreover, if something better or different is needed, God will make that plain to see by His providence.

If God raised up one +ABL for the Western world, He can raise up another. From the very stones, if need be.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #69 on:** January 07, 2026, 02:04:46 PM »

Quote from: Matthew on January 07, 2026, 01:55:07 PM

I think I understand your position, but you're still worrying above your pay grade. It is not for us to sit in ivory towers and think everything through to its "logical conclusion" and speed up time that way. That is how angels think. But they don't miss various points either. When a *man* speeds things up that way, it's just a distortion because he is forgetting countless facets as he moves the slider all the way to the end to "see what happens" or "how it turns out".

It is not for us to figure out how to solve the Crisis -- only to keep the Faith today and this year. One day at a time. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."

I do stand by my previous statement, that thinking like this ("I'm just taking this to its logical conclusion") leads to Bp. Fellay doing a 180 on the SSPX position on Vatican II, because he decided what we're doing isn't working, that the Traditional Movement has an expiration date, and that we're going to end up schismatic if we keep going down our current path.

I say: no we're not. Are you intending to be schismatic today? No. Why would you suddenly turn from God tomorrow? If Tradition was good enough for our fathers, it's good enough for me, and good enough for my children. Moreover, if something better or different is needed, God will make that plain to see by His providence.

If God raised up one +ABL for the Western world, He can raise up another. From the very stones, if need be.

I think this is actually closer to where we agree than it might appear. I am not trying to “solve” the Crisis, nor force outcomes, nor accelerate conclusions for their own sake. I fully agree that our primary duty is to keep the Faith today, this year, one day at a time, and to trust Providence for what comes next.

The Byzantine Church was providentially provided to me in a time of need. I didn’t choose the Byzantine Liturgy. I first attended it in Tennessee in 2018 and didn’t like it much at first.

Where I differ slightly is that I don’t think carefully examining long-term ecclesiological consequences is opposed to fidelity in the present. The Church has always reflected on implications precisely so that she could avoid drift, confusion, or quiet capitulation. That reflection doesn’t replace prayer, obedience, or daily faithfulness, it serves them.

I am not advocating schism, novelty, or abandoning what our fathers handed down. Quite the opposite. My concern is preserving the integrity of Tradition without pretending that unresolved contradictions do not exist. Holding those tensions without forcing premature resolutions seems to me a legitimate Catholic posture, not an angelic abstraction.

In any case, I appreciate the clarity of your response, and I agree that Providence, not our theorizing, will ultimately resolve what we cannot.

Emile · « **Reply #70 on:** January 07, 2026, 08:21:41 PM »

Just want to say that this is one of the most interesting and thought provoking discussions I've read here in some time. Thank you.

Caminus · « **Reply #71 on:** January 07, 2026, 11:57:40 PM »

You need to stop using ai to do your thinking.

Centroamerica · « **Reply #72 on:** **Yesterday** at 03:32:53 AM »

Quote from: Caminus on January 07, 2026, 11:57:40 PM

You need to stop using ai to do your thinking.

Dismissing my arguments as AI because you have nothing to add to the discussion just reveals your own lack of insight.

TomGubbinsKimmage · « **Reply #73 on:** **Yesterday** at 07:28:26 AM »

Quote from: Centroamerica on January 07, 2026, 11:29:05 AM

The Faith never needed to be saved by Latin Trad cats. That is the truth you cannot see.

Since all of the easterns had accepted VII, then yes, the sacraments had to be preserved and if the context of that was the Latin Rite, then yea.

There was ZERO public resistance among the Eastern bishops.

Many eastern Catholics have no problem being humble. And accepting this. You clearly do though have a problem with it.

Gustinau · « **Reply #74 on:** **Yesterday** at 09:02:19 AM »

Quote from: Centroamerica on January 06, 2026, 07:43:25 AM

1. Necessity Requires Absence — and Absence Never Occurred

In Catholic moral theology, necessity presupposes privation: something essential must be unavailable through ordinary means. But necessity collapses the moment a legitimate alternative exists within the Church.

The Eastern Catholic Churches—Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian, among others—never abandoned:

Apostolic liturgy
Patristic theology
Sacrificial worship
Objective sacramental discipline
A non-anthropocentric orientation to God

A question: If a Latin Rite Catholic has no Eastern Rite to attend within several hours, does it then become permissible to try and save the rite they're familiar with?

If I recall correctly. Eastern Rite churches comprise something like 1% of the population of Catholics on the planet and aren't available worldwide, and likely weren't either when the SSPX was forming. For those without said coverage, doesn't that automatically qualify for absence and privation through ordinary means?

Author Topic: End to the State of Necessity (Read 4202 times)

Matthew

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Centroamerica

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Matthew

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Matthew

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Centroamerica

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Matthew

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Centroamerica

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Centroamerica

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Matthew

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Centroamerica

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Emile

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Caminus

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Centroamerica

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TomGubbinsKimmage

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Gustinau

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