I completely agree Orla! Nothing has really changed in Rome, we would be absolutely fooling ourselves to think otherwise. Of course there are priests and bishops of good will out there, some of a more conservative frame of mind, a few more people in Rome are a little bit more favourable to Tradition and that's good. It's tiny baby steps in the right direction but that's all so far. We haven't even won the battle yet, never mind the war!!! If you think about it, the decay in the Church didn't just begin with Vatican II, Vatican II is just a final visible manifestation of the modernism and errors which had been allowed to creep into the church many years before- Pope Pius X was trying to fight modernism as far back as the early 1900's! Our Lady appeared in Fatima in 1917 to try and warn us! The terrible crisis in the church has been a century in the making, looking at it from a purely human point of view, it's going to take many, many years to sort it out. Of course God can sort out any problem as quickly as he likes, but we have to pray and trust Him and in the meantime try to be as prudent as we can. It's completely and utterly premature for the SSPX to make a pracical agreement with Rome because the doctrinal issues have simply not been dealt with. Nothing has changed. And the Society wouldn't be able to change things overnight. Even Bishop Fellay himself has admitted that there are still many, many bishops who are against tradition - and with all due respect to his Lordship, I can't believe he was considering making a practical agreement where the local bishops would have control over the apostolate of the Society! That they would be able to decide whether or not the Society would be able to open new churches or not, etc :shocked: Madness!!! Nothing has changed since 1988, we are still in a state of emergency, and while we respect and pray for the Pope, and recognise his authority, we simply must speak out when he promotes the errors of Vatican II!!