A few days ago a woman posted here seeking counsel about her marriage, which started a lively thread.  This post is not concerned with the particulars, but the general.  This post is a commentary on the state of Traditional Catholicism, and it is not good.  What has befallen the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony would have the Protestants of the 1930's aplomb.  The bonds of matrimony have been made a laughingstock by modern man, and the family a mockery.  Whatever advice the priests have been giving in the confessional, parents have been giving their children, or elders their youngers...    it is obviously not working...
Now I hear that one of the reasons Bishop Fellay is campaigning for "recognition" from Rome is that SSPX marriages are not considered valid by the ecclesiastical authorities.  Yet, these same authorities have no problem recognizing Protestant marriages.  This, of course, is absurd.  By what criteria are Protestants married, but SSPX's are not.  Is it because Protestants are just material heretics while SSPX's are obstinate, incorrigible schismatics?  That was the impression I was given while I was still Novus Ordo, but that is absurd, and I will demonstrate why...
But first, a discussion on law:
I'm willing to bet that 99.9% of you out there have never heard this.  Rather you have heard distortions of the Pauline principle about submission to the king and governors and slave masters.  That is because the powers-that-be, who have infiltrated the Vatican just as thoroughly as they infiltrated the Masonic lodges, and this since at least 1850, want to inflict upon Christendom the sheeple syndrome, eviscerating the exercise of right reason and authority- as in punishing crime- from bishoprics right down to fatherhood.  So, here we go...
Law, like everything else, has a hierarchy, ordered to ends that also have descending priority.  The five catagories are as follows:
1) Divine Law is ordered to the salvation of our soul.
2) Natural Law is ordered to the preservation of life and the propagation of the species.
3) Customary or Common Law regulates relationships, be they peer or authority relationships such as parent-child, teacher-student, boss-employee, captain-crewman, and etc.
4) Canon Law governs relationships within the Church (Those which do not simply recapitulate higher law).
5) Civil Law governs the maintainence of overall domestic tranquility (Those which do not recapitulate higher law).

It often happens that these species can come into conflict:
Martyrdom is where 1) trumps 2)
Archbishop Lefebrve's consecrations is because 1) trumps 4)
If you are reasonably certain your city is immediately threatened with nuclear attack you are not going to pay much attention to stop signs and speed limits.  2) trumps 5
If you are a monk and the abbot asks you to cut down all the apple trees under obedience but you are reasonably certain that would lead to hunger in the community, even though the act is not intrinsically evil (an act, such as contraception, that can never be justified) it would be a sin against prudence to follow such an order, but rather to question the abbot's sanity. 2) trumps 3)

Moreover, a law does not apply if it causes undue inconvenience,  (This usually applies to civil and canon laws.), or scandal.

Returning to the question of Holy Matrimony, let us quote the Bible directly...

" And there came to him the Pharisees tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?  Who answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.  They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away?  He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry."

Here, Our Lord is instituting the sacrament of Holy Matrimony.  Notice that no mention is made of priest, church, pope, or canon law.  Matrimony is a sacrament confected by a man and a woman, a contract to bond until death to propagate children.  The Apostolic Church established the custom of having the marriage confected before the altar to formalize the public dimension of the sacrament, because obviously it must be common knowledge the marriage exists, especially before children are born.  (Even in the old days common law considered two people married if they cohabited for so long, even without children, if neither one was previously married.)  The first canon laws did not even exist before 1234.  For more than half the life of Holy Mother Church, no such thing as canon law existed.  Yet here we have Bishop Fellay obscessing over canon law.  Is such an attitude traditional?  Obviously it is not.  Obviously, 1) and 2) above trump 4), but SSPX's are still paranoid about not being recognized by the "official authorities" because they pay attention only to superficialities rather than ontological truth, and they have pressured Bishop Fellay to conform.

On the flip side of this equation, the problem is marriage "annulments".  Many Catholics have no clue what an annulment really is.  Many think the church has power to nullify a marriage bond.  But above we see that not even the pope could dissolve a marriage bond.  Some more accurately know what a declaration of nullity is, but they trust the "three dimensional chess" of these tribunals to declare "annulments" on the most specious grounds.  The net result is a practical erosion of respect for the indissolubility of the marriage bond.  Couples, when the inevitable speed bumps in their romantic road to 
Eden arise, succuмb to the temptation to resort to "approved" tribunals to seek a "Catholic divorce".

One of the infallible signs of the apostasy of the Vatican establishment is the instability of matrimony.  This instability is a hallmark of all pagan and false religions, which allow divorce, because they cater to human respect.  (Even the Greek Orthodox churches have problems with this.)

We are fast approaching the time where Catholics worldwide will share the fate of Japanese Catholics, who lost all their clergy and, because of isolationalism, were not in contact with the Holy Father.  Absolutely no serious attempt has been made to establish serious, stable, self-sufficient communities by the SSPX because "we ain't Amish", and the neocons in control laugh at SHTF.  Nobody has taken Our Lady of Fatima seriously.  We shall now reap the consequences.  Serious Catholics should absolutely nurture Holy Matrimony (especially if that is their vocation), because that (and Baptism) is sure to be the only ordinary means of sanctifying grace going forward.  (You also might want to consider banishing occasions of sin and nurturing the practice of perfect contrition.)

Needless to say, if you are not reciting the Rosary daily... you are toast.

Actually, you would be amazed with what could be done on just 10 square miles.  :)  My dad grew up in a town in Western Pa where many people had a cow and just about everybody had chickens.  His parents sent him to the factory because "there's no future here".  Consequently, I was raised in the land of "Pleasant Valley Sunday" as per the song by the Monkeys.  Now, that factory is long closed (Hamilton Watch, Lancaster Pa) and my town has just become another extension of Main Drag USA, with all the big box stores and fake food.

As an individual/family that is true, maybe even on 2 acres.  But if you are talking about a place where Roman Catholics dominate you'd need more room.  

The center of the Catholic city will always be the Monastery, and the center of the Monastery will always be the tabernacle.  The failure of the SSPX lies in the fact that so many people moved to, say, St Marys and then expected the community to do everything for them.  The net result was transplanted suburbia.  The center of the catholic city I envision would be a group of oblates who truly strive to remove themselves from the frivoless world and pioneer a settlement.  At first it would be all hard work and little prayer, but over time things would come together and people would be surprised how happy they would be.  It does take vision, patience, perseverance, willingness to submit oneself to authority, generousity, and a lot of other qualities not cultivated by the its-all-about-me society we live in, where people are too busy posting their every move on facebook...

Actually, it has quite a varied climate.  When most people think Utah they think Flaming Gorge or Arches or Bryce.  Those places are Japanese tourist traps.  The real Utah is the La Sals and the Wasatch and the Blue Mountain lakes.  Yes, a large part of the state has been federalized, but most of the natives resent it.  They resent the BLM charging them 20 bucks per head of cattle to graze on lands that God made.  (I once asked an EPA agent if they thought that maybe it was Washington that created the heavens and the earth, they sure acted like it.)
The people in Utah have a standing joke... 
What is the difference between Beer Nuts and Deer Nuts?
Beer Nuts come in a can with a label on it, and when SHTF the price of beer nuts will go to infinity but you will always find deer nuts under a buck...

When the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart comes, the shepherds of Utah will be the first converts...

The Great Salt Lake covered a hige area right after Noah's flood and has been shrinking ever since (which is why it is so salty).  It will totally dry up in about another 250 years or so, and leave behind a salt flat like you see in so many other low lying areas.  If only the morons who believe in Darwinism would drive around out West rather than waste money in college they would get a real education.