Quote from: Wessex

It did not take long to see more fragmentation; I think it is cyclical and may have something to do with the weather. Let us blame global warming!  

Yes, the five part Dawn of the Zombies soap opera was a big mistake. I think here the bish is playing with his audience and is trying to re-establish some kind of position within the ever-present confusion called the SSPX. A bond is supposed to exist between the two rival bishops using female intermediaries from this world and the next. Bp. W was left holding the parcel and and has duly passed it on to his audience to determine the value of its contents. This is his typical modus operandi: leadership from the rear. Naturally, we are therefore inclined to contrast this style with that of the more active within the 'loose association' and credit does have to go to the Kentucky faction for their remarkable enterprise over the last few years. In saying this, I do not have to agree with all of their positions or their way of working.

The influence Bp. W has had and is having within the trad world does deserve some in depth analysis. Maybe because he is the only bishop on the 'right' side of the current Lefebvre divide that he can do no wrong for some people. That and the charisma from being a very rare polished Oxbridge graduate that promotes a uniquely high church product  for the English-speaking world along with the added bonus of being very politically incorrect. Doubtless he is following in ABL's footsteps to some extent but is fearful of doing more than he did. Herein lies that weakening stagnation that infuriates the more active trads. I feel therefore an examination of this characteristic in the bishop cannot be undertaken without looking at how it also infected ABL's thinking that in due course solidified as the torpid SSPX. Now, I am beginning to feel very drowsy .......... all things SSPX is very tiring!  

Wise Wessex.  You are the most observant among us!  Perhaps a little black coffee for your drowsing sleeps:

Let's look at this in a larger context.  What we have here might also simply be the age-old two sides of Catholicism, namely the opportune Jesuitical diplomats vs. the principled Franciscan and Augustinian zelanti.  The optimistic take would be that the "ever-present confusion called the SSPX" might just be some dreadfully clever Jesuitical diplomacy led by Bishop Fellay whose true impetus will be more fatally insidious to the Novus Ordo than can be dreamt of in our philosophy.  Perhaps there is some method to the SSPX madness?  However that would leave Bishop Williamson as he who has fallen down between two chairs onto a painfully hard stone floor beneath.  

Then the Zelanti would be elsewhere, neither among the hapless Resistance nor among the Fideist (aka brain dead) dogmatic sedevacantists, but rather among the zealous Catholic Nationalists of popular nightmare.  Strange as this must strike our sometimes dull-minded fellow bloggers, perhaps Madame Le Pen has much more to do with our Catholic future than the crestfallen and now demoralised Bishop Williamson together with all his many fast-moving parcels.

Instead of Dawn of the Zombies, perhaps the movie now playing is actually Dawn of the Parousia.  Just an apocalyptic Franciscan thought!  In any event the Jesuitism of the SSPX may make much more sense when we contrast it with its actual contemporary Catholic opposite.  At present Pan-European Nationalism (necessarily in essence Roman and Catholic) is exactly like a loaded gun (cf. the on-going Ukrainian cινιℓ ωαr and the supervolcano now erupting in and around Jerusalem, aka Armageddon).  Bishop Williamson is playing comic relief during the Intermission, but the Second Act promises to be not for the faint-hearted.  

Belt in, good slumbering Wessex -- we are out from the starting gate and in for a heart-stopping wild ride all the way down to the wire.

   

If you cannot win (on earth), join them. This could well be the motivation of the new SSPX. A recognition that the hierarchy has debauched itself through history and the Church will forgive you for not being able to negotiate with true saints in Rome. The difference here though is the hierarchy wants to change the rules and make debauchery an acceptable expression of the human condition rather than as a failing. The abolition of sin! Could not the Society become hopelessly corrupted once it enters the portals of modern Rome? Is that why diplomacy has come down to finding an urgent place within the pantheon and avoiding inconvenient truths? Does Bp. Fellay really think he can change hearts and minds in the new citadel of sanctified immorality? And does he want to?

An alternative to all this is withdrawing from such an odious prospect and not engaging with the world except to repeat that it is doomed! I am drowning in negative comments cataloguing the immense corruption in all aspects of life without any clear intentions to disrupt the pattern of our lives and incur discomfort. The survival of the Church may as you say depend on a reawakening of Christian themes as we try and assert our national identities away from the politically planned amorphous one. But I am at pains to discover what the American version would look like! The curse of unfettered
migration though is intended to thwart any return to old religious and national values.