.
Some very good replies:
The reason for this priest's confusion is because he puts the SSPX at the centre of his world and it is devouring him. He has invested his life in the organisation and feels it is beyond criticism. His belief in the Church has become a belief in the SSPX which is a dangerous development and which can one day end in terrible and damaging disillusionment.
Reading this, I am reminded of how Pope Francis has been
quoting Scripture ever since his election (and before, actually)
only to MISinterpret the proper meaning thereof, and to
MISapply the lessons that Apostolic Sacred Tradidition would
have us learn from the Bible, for this phenomenon is most
decidedly
a terrible and damaging disillusionment, and it's
coming right from the "humble" papal apartment!
A healthier approach is to use the facilities that trad institutions provide with gratitude but also with a critical eye. Being a genuine traditionalist in this day and age means proceeding along these lines. The relentless quest for truth is what it is all about, not feelings of (in)security.
With
a critical eye, to be sure!
We are called to a higher level of discernment. Our Lord said in
Scripture, "they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them" (Lk. xvi. 29). Well, we have 2000 years of Church history,
ex cathedra definitions, 20 reliable Great Councils (and the 21st
conspicuously UNreliable in light of the first 20!), and the Doctors
of the Church. (Actually,
watch out for the next "doctor" who
might be someone like Karl Rahner or Pierre Teihard de Chardin!)
I don't understand how the priest can think the resistance threatens the Church's indefectability but that the NSSPX doesn't. Is this what the new Society priests are learning in the seminary? That traditionalism threatens the indefectability of the Church? That's a common concern for someone converting to traditionalism to have, but how can a priest of any amount of years who has gone through seminary have the same concern? If this concern was bred at the seminary, then before you know it Fellay won't have any priests left.
And of course, the very idea is nonsense. It is the Novus Ordo which threatens the indefectability of the Church, which is precisely why all good traditional clergy have always insisted on a true distinction between Catholic and Conciliar. Priests who think the Church's indefectability is challenged by the traditional Catholic resistance are very confused to the meaning of at least indefectability, and probably quite a few other things. It's the kind of silly slop that one would expect to hear from Fr Z. It doesn't belong to traditional priests. Or, shouldn't.
Fr. Z is probably his bedtime meditation!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Definitely one of the better EC's in recent memory.
So now you agree that;
1) [The contents of] the mid-April Declaration of 2012 "have not been retracted but even defended", as being for instance “too subtle!",
2) The official SSPX docuмents of July 14, 2012 and June 27, 2013 "have not properly undone the damage", and..
3) That it has been "proven that the governing policy of SSPX HQ has not changed" ????
If that is the case, good for you.
Time to stop giving the benefit of doubt to "weasel politicians" and "pathological liars" then...
If calling Francis a modernist or saying 'thank goodness we didn't sign a deal with Rome' were grounds to give them any benefit, we might as well start giving it to Obama and people of his ilk.
Word. . . . . . . . . (lingo from the streets)
Finally, the following is an excerpt from this EC, but I've arranged
it so as to make the parts corresponding to each other directly
comparable, which would have taken H.E. more ROOM to do, so
that's the reason he didn't do it.
He knew I would do it for him!! HAHAHAHA
[My additions in brackets]
Take for instance the arguments of an honourable SSPX priest who recently sent me an e-mail, accusing me of wrongly assessing the present state of the SSPX.
[And following each of his accusations, find H.E.'s response,
which compares it to the historical record of ABL.]
[For] I am no Archbishop Lefebvre, and I do not pretend to be, but does my colleague realize that all of these arguments (except the third) he could have applied thirty years ago to the Archbishop’s resistance to the official Church authorities in Rome ?
My resistance to the – as I call it – Newsociety is, he says,
1) too personally motivated --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
1) motivated only by the urgent need to defend the Faith;
2) forgetting the good of the Church --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
2) for the good of the Universal Church;
[The lone exception is item 3 -- so I took the liberty of............]
3) inconsistent with positions I have taken before, yet the Archbishop’s resistance was ... [after all, I was his first choice for episcopal consecration, and xspxsgbF was merely an afterthought, 'squeezed in' at the last moment, as it were, unfortunately];
4) lacking Catholic realism --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
4) in a completely realistic way (as the Catholic fruits of his Society proved);
5) against Church indefectibility --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
5) not disproving but proving, by his very resistance, the Church’s indefectibility;
6) for each man being his own Pope --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
6) for the Church of all time being the measure of the Popes;
7) for a modernist vision of the Church --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
7) against all craziness of neo-modernism;
8) Protestant --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
8) against modernism’s renewal of Protestantism;
9) against union with Rome --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
9) for union with the Catholic Rome of all time; and finally,
10) pushing souls away from the Church --- yet the Archbishop’s resistance was:
10) helping many truly Catholic souls to keep the Faith instead of losing it.
QUIZ QUESTION:
Can anyone guess what
the only two (2) words were, that I
had to delete from +W's EC (not counting "Now," which I replaced with
"[For]"), in my rearrangement, above, of his words?
.