Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => SSPX Resistance News => Topic started by: ArmandLouis on December 02, 2025, 11:28:43 AM
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Bishop Williamson: “…Then where is there a problem? Answer: seminarians being taught and learning to believe the fullness of Catholic doctrine are coming into possession of a treasure beyond price, that Faith without which it is impossible to please God and so to get to heaven. Now it is true that anybody taking part in a public Rosary March must have some Catholic Faith at least, and that all such people should benefit from contact with seminarians being armed with the fullness of Faith. However, the risk is that few such people may grasp the importance of the fullness of integral Catholic doctrine, and so the seminarians could be exposed to a kind of temptation of "TRADEcuмENISM": let all of us who believe in the Rosary just get together, and all will be well; let all of us who love the Mother of God concentrate on the things that unite us and not dwell on the things that divide us, after all we are all Catholics, are we not?
That is how seminarians might be tempted to begin devaluing what makes the specific Mission and value of the Society of St. Pius X, namely its guarding the integrity of Catholic doctrine.
This importance of doctrine, on which follows the need for so-called Traditional Catholics to shun religious fellowship even with so-called conservative Catholics (except to make them see the error of their ways), is difficult for many people today, even Catholics, to understand.
Let us think for a moment. A Catholic is a Catholic (i.e. much better placed to get to Heaven than if he were not a Catholic) not by his sex, age, intelligence, or any such thing, but by what he believes, meaning not what he makes up in his own mind, but by what he knows to be true in matters of God.
Thus a Catholic knows firstly that one God exists, and that to associate with atheists on the supposed common ground of benevolence to mankind, while excluding God, is to live a lie and a blasphemy – because anything good at all in man comes only from God. Secondly he knows that God once (only once) took flesh and became man, the God-man Jesus Christ, and that to associate with other religions on the basis of a supposed common belief in God, excluding Jesus Christ, is to live a lie and a blasphemy against the goodness of God who took infinite pain to come down to earth for us men and for our salvation. Thirdly the Catholic knows that Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, came down amongst us not only once in the Incarnation but also every time Mass is validly celebrated, in the mystery of the Real Presence, and that to associate with other "Christians" on the grounds of a supposed common belief in Christ, is to associate in a lie if these "Christians" insult God (at least objectively) by their refusal of the doctrine of the Real Presence.
These are three classic examples, what one might call the first three classic stages, of the principle whereby to refuse Catholic doctrine is to insult God. Thus he who denies the Real Presence, for instance, gravely under-estimates the true love of God. Alas, many Catholics today do not understand this primacy of doctrine, which is a primacy of divine reality, because they put man and his fellowship in front of the interests of God.
However, let us suppose the principle is understood, at least in theory. Then since Vatican II we may say the principle has been carried at least two stages further forward in practice:
Fourthly, a Catholics knows (but not by authority – there is the problem!) that the Second Vatican Council departed from Tradition, and that to associate indiscriminately with Novus Ordo "Catholics" on the basis of a supposed common "Catholicism" is to associate in a lie and a blasphemy if these "Catholics" insult God (at least objectively) by trampling on Catholic Tradition.
Fifthly, a Catholic knows (this is even more controversial, but, day by day, events prove Archbishop Lefebvre to have been right) that the "conservatives" who put themselves back under Rome around or after the fateful Consecrations of June, 1988, also thereby departed from Tradition, and that to associate in friendship or solidarity with them is implicitly to betray the Catholic Faith by saying in actions if not in words that the Faith is something that today's Roman Protestants are capable of guarding – for who protects a child by throwing him amongst thieves? So whoever does throw a child amongst thieves, what value does he put on the child? And if he thinks thieves are not thieves, what is his judgment worth? And if he pretends they are not thieves, what is his honesty worth? In any case the child is ruined.
Dear friends, this letter has often (and recently) taken us "Traditionalists" to task for our laziness, complacency, vanity, hypocrisy, all the sins in the book! For, subjectively, we are all of us poor sinners, and we are liars if we deny it (1 Jn 1,8). Objectively however, we are carriers of glorious Tradition, the fullness of Catholic Truth. Our own misery as carriers makes no less glorious the Truth we carry, indeed the more lowly we may (must) think of ourselves, the more highly by contrast we should uphold the Truth.
In that case the seminarians may go down the hill to join with all other devotees of the Rosary and of the Mother of God, and they may mix with there to do them all the good they can, but the greatest good they can do them – always with all due prudence – is to give them to understand that, fourthly the Novus Ordo , and fifthly its "conservative" branch, are: not adequate ways to honour the Mother of God or to serve her Divine Son.“
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Thank you for reposting this!
What does this mean WRT the recent phenomenon of cancelled priests/bishops and growing "conservative" communities of lay support for them?
I respect these men, they have acted heroically, often cancelled for celebrating TLM...
...but aren't they still N.O.? At least until they make public pronouncement renouncing VII, VII docuмents and N.O. Missae?
I suppose they could do something similar to +Abp Vigano to this effect?
Absent such public statements, is associating with these communities an "an adequate way to honour the Mother of God or to serve her Divine Son?“
(Not to mention the issue of doubtful sacraments which gets more dire with each, passing decade - and nobody wants to talk about.)