I appreciate your life-long perseverance and your love of the Catholic Faith.
But why do you preemptively reject hotel room Masses? The Irish used to say Mass on rocks. Masses used to be said in the Catacombs in early Church history. How can modern-day Catholics consider themselves "above" such behavior? Isn't that a dangerous attitude?
When Catholics insist on professional buildings for Mass or other smells & bells, doesn't that place them in a rather vulnerable position, open to blackmail and manipulation from priests and organizations with less than pure motives? After all, there are only so many groups that can offer church-like buildings for Mass. The SSPX could require a lot more compromises than they do today, but most people would go along with it -- because it's either A) stay with them, B) back to the Novus Ordo, or C) it's back to garages, warehouses, hotels -- and many Catholics (including you?) would rather die than go with option C.
Personally, attending the Holy Sacrifice of Mass in a humble location is not beneath me. I am just grateful for the Mass and for the Catholic Faith without compromise.
And you'd be surprised what kind of middle ground there is, between SSPX chapels and Mass in a temp location like a hotel room. My local Resistance chapel is in a converted warehouse of sorts, and we have the whole package -- stations, statues, a real altar and step, incense, High Mass, benediction, pews, the list goes on.
For that matter, I've seen some of the Resistance chapels in Ireland and they are small but very beautiful. It doesn't take much for a small but fervent group of Trads to put together a workable chapel. I believe the SSPX monopoly or virtual-monopoly on Traditional Mass & the sacraments must be destroyed. Having control of 90% of Traditional Mass centers is too much power for a handful of unaccountable (answering to no man on earth) individuals.
Bishop Fellay, and now Fr. Pagliarani, have no charism or authority whatsoever to rule 90% (just a rough estimate; I might be wrong on the percentage) of the world's Trad chapels. Their authority is completely man-made, like the current CEO of Wal-mart. There is absolutely no difference. Both are in power by God's permissive will. The SSPX is indeed part of the Catholic Church, but they are not the Church. God never promised that no priest or bishop would ever fall or make a mistake. Only St. Peter received this promise, as well as the Catholic Church in general.
Here is the difference between the Church you remember before V2 and the SSPX today: The priests at your parish before Vatican II were under the authority of their local bishop, who in turn answered to the Pope. Today, the whole Trad world is made up of individual lifeboats. The SSPX is just the Wal-mart of lifeboats, consolidating over 90% of the lifeboats into their own organization, putting all the other mom & pop lifeboats (independent chapels) out of business.
And we all know what happens when a Wal-mart takes over and becomes a monopoly: the company's profit becomes king and 1st priority, they forbid any kind of employee unions, they force employees to work extra hours without pay, they pay as little as possible, etc. A monopoly is not a good thing, unless it's a God-appointed one, like the Catholic Church. But the SSPX is not the Church; it was not founded or appointed by God. It is a purely human organization, even though they happen to deal in sacred things. God never made a promise to +Lefebvre that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it" or, "Behold I am with you all days".
Once again Matthew you take my opinion and make it say things I never said in the context you place them. First of all I have no problem with Mass in a house or cave up a mountain. God knows if it were not for such Masses the Catholic faith may not have survived over the hundreds of years of suppression by the British begun by that Satanist Oliver Cromwell. Every year the SSPX priests go to one of these 'rocks' to say Mass and we travel with them.
What I said was that for centuries Catholics have practiced their faith in churches, designed for and consecrated for that purpose. For centuries the flock remained united around their churches. I was reared in such an environment and naturally it is what I wanted for my Children and grandchildren. In a church one knows you are in God's house. especially the children who learn discipline while Mass is being said.
Now given our church is as traditionally Catholic as any in the past, with all the sacramentals visible around its altar and walls, with never a hint of modernism from its priests, indeed quite the opposite, condemnation of all that is Modernist coming from Rome since Vatican II, with families and their children present every Sunday for example, why on Earth would one prefer to take one's family to the Resistance Mass said in a hotel room? How would you explain that to your children? That is the context of what I said, no more or no less..