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I hate those bumper stickers.  

It doesn't matter WHAT it reminds you of. Tell me -- tell us -- why the Resistance is erring in doctrine, and we'll talk. No one ever criticizes the Resistance on doctrine, and there's a reason for that.

Doctrinally correct groups can still be badly run, mismanaged and fall to pieces and fragment and do damage to the faith of their followers.  Bishop Williamson says, carry on going to the SSPX until the resistance can get its act together.  Resistance hard liners say he is wrong.  That looks like a split in the making to me.

Fr. Hewko says it is wrong to go to SSPX masses.

The post below on this Forum in the thread about Fr. Hewko said.

   
For those who support the Resistance and yet continue to assist at SSPX Masses, you must understand that you are not helping the cause; you are hurting it. Leave the SSPX for good and put your full support behind the Resistance. Otherwise, you are being complicit in undermining the fight for Catholic Tradition. The first condition for canonical regularization determined at the 2012 SSPX General Chapter is a betrayal of the Catholic Faith because it sweeps doctrine underneath the rug and concedes that Rome has the right to teach error. Hence, the first necessary condition of the General Chapter is doctrinally unacceptable. If we accept that it is (one's reason forces its acceptance anyways), then in principle we can no longer assist at SSPX Masses. Otherwise, we would be showing a public unity in worship (the greatest act of worship by the way) with those who adhere to this unacceptable principle, whether explicitly or implicitly, and at the same time we would be undermining the resistance to error. It is no different as to why the SSPX told us not to assist at FSSP Masses. It does not matter if the individual priest is doctrinally orthodox. The fact that he belongs to a group that officially adheres to error and that he does not oppose that error, consent on his part is assumed.




It stands to reason that until the resistance can deliver mass and sacraments to people it is pretty theoretical construct.  To do that it needs priests, money and properties to hold mass in.

If the resistance insists on its supporters ignoring the reality that today it cannot deliver them the Mass and other sacraments, then it is not long for this world as it won't gain much traction  Very few people are going to go all in on the first hand in a game of Texas Holdem.  The few nutters who will, don't have money or assets and they are more trouble than they are worth.

This is the first or second sh!t fight which will play out.  Are you a REAL resistance supporter or a clanging symbol, who claims to support the resistance but won't make the sacrifices necessary.  There are multiple threads on this forum of single people who had delivered very little in life, have no family and no career and no religious vocation, judging and questioning the zeal of other Catholics for not having carbon copies of what they consider are the right schools, clothes, jobs and diets for "real" Catholics to have.  Right now, they are holding back with their vitriol but give them a year or two of frustration and lack of progress and they will start turning on each other as surely as the Anabaptists of Munster did.

Some level of tolerance is necessary for unity and cohesion.  This board demonstrates that tolerance is in pretty short supply among rad-Trads.

Let's assume I suddenly woke up with a craving for organic vegetables, a strong dislike of Joos and a belief that Max Krah and Bernie Fellay were trying to sell out the SSPX to modernist Rome.  I decide to sell my house, uproot my kids, convince my wife and move to Boston, Kentucky and support "the resistance".  At best Fr. Pfeiffer would be able to establish a couple of chapels and fully fund them for say 10 years.  Ok, so 300 to 600 Trads somewhere get to mass and the sacraments.  But that is not scalable, (nor likely to happen).

The SSPX grew because widows left it property, houses and financial assets, worth millions and millions by people who were motivated to give to the SSPX because it was the biggest Trad group.  It had the first mover advantage.  It was, and still is, the Microsoft of Traditionalism.  The Google of Orthodox Catholicism, The McDonalds of Masses, (millions served).  The resistance has nothing like that.  Your only bishop is hedging his bets.  That speaks volumes to anyone who is not an obsessive.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Given the nature of the supporters of the resistance, they have signed a docuмent in the UK and I know more than half of those names, I am confident that it will come to nothing and will never be able to overcome the financial, personality, unity and practical roadblocks that stand in its way.  Being a committed resistance supporter today, for all practical purposes means being a home-aloner, since there is no Chapel within several hundred miles of me and I live in the most heavily populated part of the UK.

The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f'king Judean People's Front.  The P.F.J.: Yeah, Splitters. P.F.J.: Splitters.



That sketch is funny, because it shows a truth about humans who take extreme positions and refuse to compromise, even on things they could for a common goal.  Pragmatism and prudence are the oil that makes life run smoothly.  Success of failure is simply a question of whether you use the dipstick correctly, or are the dipstick.


 

I think people might understand each other better if they defined what they mean by "fail".

I do not see the Resistance becoming a large organization like the SSPX but I do not see that as failure. I don't think it is intended by God to become another SSPX in the first place. I could be wrong and God may raise it to be a large organization. That would be a pleasant surprise but at least in the meantime I am not racked by anger and frustration because it isn't what *I* want it to be. It is what God wants it to be.

I've attended Mass at independent chapels before and I understood what HE meant by a loose network. I also know this isn't anything new. There were other times of crisis in history where people had to make the best with what they had and nothing came in pretty little boxes. This is no different. And if HE is working out his salvation as are the now independent priests who travel tirelessly ministering to those who see a danger in the SSPX, how can it possibly be a failure? If people are being moved to study the issues of VII for themselves and be wary of whether priests in the SSPX are teaching error, or at least trending that way, how can it be a failure?

If a person is set on the Resistance becoming an organization to rival the SSPX, then of course they will be offended or perceive it as a failure if it does not. But if they were to step outside the box in their thinking and realize that a) we do not exist primarily to rival the SSPX -- that is a focus on the wrong place and likely there's some pride at stake in that thinking, and b) God is not limited and can work just as well without the existence of a strict human organization, then people might be a little less unnecessarily stressed over the question. That doesn't mean that a person should stop organizing if there's something going on in their area, it just means that we should keep in mind the REAL definition of success, which is the salvation of souls, which IS happening. The rest is secondary and as such, does not define whether the Resistance succeeds or fails.