My call to the SSPX as Francis begins [....], on the first full day of the pontificate of Francis. The entire SSPX should gather in St. Peter’s Square, crawl on hands and knees to the Apostolic Palace and beg the new Pope to allow them to kiss his foot, knee and hand and promise obedience. Given the new pontificate, what a gesture that would be. And it would provide a HUGE does dose of credibility to those who desire to maintain continuity with tradition.
Quite the contrary: It would be
abandonment of credibility, because he offers
nothing in return to SSPX for the
promise of obedience he urges. Despite information spreading out of South America that as Cardinal Bergoglio, he was hostile to any variety of more-or-less traditional Latin Mass.
But for readers who know very little about him, Fr. Z is the man billed in a
promo page for a 2013 conference "for men" in Madison (Wisc.):
A convert from Lutheranism in his early 20’s, Fr. Z, studied theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, and Patristic Theology at the “Augustinianum”--both in Rome--and was ordained in St. Peter’s Basilica by Bl. John Paul II in 1991.
Uh, huh. "Ordained" more than 2 decades
after the
New Ordinal of 1969 changed
traditional ordination into
Novus Ordo "installation".
In late February, Fr. Z's Web-site was
selling buttons bearing the coat-of-arms of Benedict XVI, surrounded by the motto "
RE-ELECT RATZINGER !"
I'm amazed at all the
converts from Protestantism, seeking fame
on the Internet as "Catholics", who have the arrogance to condescendingly lecture cradle Catholics who remember the Church before Vatican II, about what it means to be a Roman Catholic! Especially when the former-Protestants treat papal encyclicals as if they were invented during Vatican II.