Dear Machabees,

Your comments are in quotes, my responses are not.

"The seriousness [of the alleged Doctrinal Compromise] has progressed from [the SSPX's] agenda of wanting a "practical deal" into the discovered evolution of their Doctrinal errors.  All Docuмents, interviews, conferences, articles, executions of the sspx administration, sermons, etc, all collected, point in that direction."

My problem is that I don't understand what you, or anybody else who claims a doctrinal shift on the part of the SSPX either before or after the decision to pursue a no-doctrinal compromise regularization, is talking about.  I have read reams of efforts by Resistants to explain and defend their position, and none of it squares with any facts that I am aware of.

“Also, I have read many of your posts on IA; I have not been edified in your sincerity to put things together.  I will be glad to respond to questions, only if you have a desire to put your "fragmented thesis" together.  As time passes, as like anything, there is a progression of thoughts and events that happen which play-out the desires of an "accused".  I have noticed many times, rather, all of the time, that you do "pick and choose" from segments of "what was said and what was written down" to bring out a "story-line"; than, what is the real "story-line" manifested from ALL of the evidence.”  

As regards the events of 2011-12, I do not pick and choose.  The relevant docuмentation is not much in question: the Candlemass conference at Winona; the letter of the three bishops and the response of the General Council; the April 15 Doctrinal Declaration; the July 14 declaration of the Society; the Six Conditions; and Bishop Fellay's numerous explanatory conferences, up to and including his conference at the blessing of the cornerstone of the new seminary; and his recent remarks in Kansas City.

They all tell the same story. It is a story of the prudential decision to pursue a no doctrinal compromise regularization, how that played out, and how the Holy Father ultimately reneged on his proposal, and where the Society goes from there.

Most of the counterarguments focus on the April 15 doctrinal declaration.  As far as I know, none of these even tries to come to grips with the fact that the declaration is based on the May 5, 1998 protocol, which was written by Rome and signed by ABL.  The difference is that the 2012 declaration is more clearly traditional than the 2015 protocol.  In order to denounce +Fellay, one must denounce ABL.  There is no way around this, as far as I can see -- even for the critics of the declaration within the SSPX.  The other arguments, to the extent that I can make anything of them, generally argue that if some important matter of the faith is not dealt with in the declaration, that must mean that the General Council denies it.  This makes no sense at all.  Does the fact that the Apostles’ Creed does not state the divinity of the Holy Ghost means that it denies the Paraclete’s godhead?  

The other chief target of the Resistance is the six conditions.  But they represent nothing significantly different from what was implicit in the whole original decision to change the policy of 2006 and seek a no doctrinal compromise.  The six conditions in effect say to Rome: if you some day you again call for a no doctrinal compromise regularization, here’s what it would look like.  The contrary statements of the Resistance are just more denunciations of the concept of such a regularization – which is the say, the denunciation of a prudential decision of those in authority in the SSPX.  

You can denounce that prudential decision -- although I think that +Fellay has the better of the argument, and in any event is the one with the authority to decide.  You can cease being one of the SSPX faithful if you feel strongly enough about the matter, although I think that would be a very imprudent decision.  But you can’t claim that the issue is doctrinal, because it is not.

I think it all boils down to this.  In the years between 1988 and 2001, many in the Society grew rather comfortable with the “intermediate status quo”.  When Rome again became willing to talk to the Society, the comfortable ones began to get uncomfortable.  By contrast, Bishop Fellay saw this as an occasion to take up again ABL’s project of reaching an understanding with Rome that would leave the Society from a doctrinal perspective “as we are.”  At first he, like everyone else (myself included), never dreamed that Rome would agree to a no doctrinal compromise regularization, and made that a matter of explicit policy in 2006.  

But when Pope Benedict changed, Bishop Fellay likewise changed; and then the comfortable grew very uncomfortable, and settled opposition began to show itself.  The easiest way to rationalize that position was to appeal to the example of ABL, and to treat the issue as doctrinal.  But that was all rationalization, not truth.

I will try to look at more of the Resistance writings, but it is with no great enthusiasm.  I have already seen a lot of it, and it just doesn’t make a doctrinal case.  The only thing that really makes the doctrinal case is an argument that at least to some degree denies the authority of the Pope and the hierarchy – which is to say, one that is at least implicitly SVist, and so also implicitly schismatic, since it tries to found membership in the Church on something besides the Chair of Peter.  

The Church of Christ is undergoing a terrible and unprecedented crisis.  But ceasing to be a Catholic is not the solution to that crisis.  As I have often said before, that is destroying the village in order to save it.

I realize hollingsworth that you have a strong will, and I understand your desires as a layman; yet, you have not understood my context.  It is very innate for them; as it is innate to be tied to your own mother.  

 Over a year in the crisis, is still "fresh"; one does not abandon their family when they are having successes in helping other Priestly [family] members.

 To be clear.  I am not advocating a "yellow brick road"; my posts show the contrary.  I am trying to understand the situation the way it is presently.

 The only viable solution to not "hear it" anymore at this time, is to find an Independent Priest with no [innate] ties to the sspx.

It is true that these priests will always be a part of that which formed and nurtured them but the mother has gone insane and they must love her from afar from now on.

What you write is a lie. There was material on Ignis Ardens and perhaps on Cath Info about the status in Germany. Bishop Williamson telling the truth about the 'h0Ɩ0cαųst' is not the reason for problems the SSPX have in that District.

There are a few threads outlining this.

JG:

Quote

What you write is a lie. There was material on Ignis Ardens and perhaps on Cath Info about the status in Germany. Bishop Williamson telling the truth about the 'h0Ɩ0cαųst' is not the reason for problems the SSPX have in that District.

There are a few threads outlining this.

Yes, this is a damned lie!  Thank you for saying that.  The Society, through their spokesmen +Fellay, Frs. Phluger and Schmidberger, et al. ran around frenetically after the infamous interview declaring solemnly and unequivocally  that the Society's "position, visa-a-vis the h0Ɩ0cαųst, was not their own.  This could mean that in German sspx schools and in sspx schools elsewhere, the children receive false history as it touches that event.  

And you guys are telling me that if the German authorities were to conclude that the Society in general shared +W's believes on the H, this would not affect their ability to run schools, or even operate it Germany?