I think this is just another example of the SSPX gone wrong. It's "Opus Fellay" at work again, it's become cultish. That priest needs to study what the Church teaches on obedience - and while he's at it, study the quotes of his founder, Archbishop LeFebvre - before he gives garbage sermons like that.

Using the pulpit as a gun turret is protestant. Your priest did a heinous and disgraceful thing for which he'll answer.
Anyway, that's what anonymous internet forum handles are for   :cool:

Who was the priest?

I left Mass today very confused and disturbed.  My husband left with the same impression, only he is prone to hot-headedness, so he was a bit angry as well.

Our priest today publicly chastised those of us who visit internet forums and criticize the superiors of the Society.  He gave a sermon on Obedience as taught by St. Ignatius.  He even went so far as to say "if you superiors tell you black is white then you must believe it."  He said, also, that he has been to these forums and read some of the comments criticizing Bishop Fellay and Fr. Rostand, and that those who are doing this are no true Catholics, but Catholics without charity.

Worse, he compared those critical of the Society to Protestants, inferring that this is what Martin Luther did.  He said we are wrong to think we can "form our own opinions" about what is happening within the Society.

He also said, and I will try to say it like he did, "Does this mean we should come here if there are clown Masses?  No. But we cannot criticize and examine every decision that the superiors make."

Here is my confusion:  So it is okay to criticize the Novus Ordo Mass and the conciliar church, but it is not okay to do that within the Society?

It is okay to question the validity of Masses at Novus Ordo, but not so at the chapels within the Society?

It is okay to question and examine the actions and behaviors of Novus Ordo bishops and priests, but not those of the Society?

We are not to have blind obedience to Diocesan priests and bishops but we are in the Society?

When we tried to speak with our priest after Mass, he was cold and harsh.  

Worse, we had a large family there that I have never seen before.  I doubt they will ever come back.  Who would blame them??

This is down right wrong in every way.

Is this what the Society is about---they are the Church?  They know everything?  Their superiors and priests are beyond reproach?

Here's what I know for certain:  Priests are reading the forums and scouring Youtube for videos that people have posted.  It wouldn't surprise me if they start asking people to leave because they are causing problems.  I also know personally that some priests are confronting people and asking them to choose sides.  This is EVIL!!!

We are not far from leaving this chapel.  Today was "strike one."  

Do they even CARE what they are doing to the faithful???!!!!

I left Mass today very confused and disturbed.  My husband left with the same impression, only he is prone to hot-headedness, so he was a bit angry as well.

Our priest today publicly chastised those of us who visit internet forums and criticize the superiors of the Society.  He gave a sermon on Obedience as taught by St. Ignatius.  He even went so far as to say "if you superiors tell you black is white then you must believe it."  He said, also, that he has been to these forums and read some of the comments criticizing Bishop Fellay and Fr. Rostand, and that those who are doing this are no true Catholics, but Catholics without charity.

Worse, he compared those critical of the Society to Protestants, inferring that this is what Martin Luther did.  He said we are wrong to think we can "form our own opinions" about what is happening within the Society.

This is not Catholicism.  It is Stalinism.  A priest without jurisdiction can command you to do anything.  And criticizing the SSPX only makes you a Protestant if the SSPX has no decided to formalize the arrogance that I have always thought was just below the surface within it and formally declare that it IS the Church.  

I think this is just another example of the SSPX gone wrong. It's "Opus Fellay" at work again, it's become cultish. That priest needs to study what the Church teaches on obedience - and while he's at it, study the quotes of his founder, Archbishop LeFebvre - before he gives garbage sermons like that.

This was my initial reaction.  Cult-like.

Frightening.  

The devil is having his day for sure.  

Quote from: CathMomof7

I left Mass today very confused and disturbed.  My husband left with the same impression, only he is prone to hot-headedness, so he was a bit angry as well.

Our priest today publicly chastised those of us who visit internet forums and criticize the superiors of the Society.  He gave a sermon on Obedience as taught by St. Ignatius.  He even went so far as to say "if you superiors tell you black is white then you must believe it."  He said, also, that he has been to these forums and read some of the comments criticizing Bishop Fellay and Fr. Rostand, and that those who are doing this are no true Catholics, but Catholics without charity.

Worse, he compared those critical of the Society to Protestants, inferring that this is what Martin Luther did.  He said we are wrong to think we can "form our own opinions" about what is happening within the Society.

This is not Catholicism.  It is Stalinism.  A priest without jurisdiction can command you to do anything.  And criticizing the SSPX only makes you a Protestant if the SSPX has no decided to formalize the arrogance that I have always thought was just below the surface within it and formally declare that it IS the Church.  

It is "ecclesial solipsism" that seeks to entrap the faithful in a species of Stockholm Syndrome so that they may be manipulated at the Pavlovian whim of clerical demagogues.

The SSPX Fathers cannot demand of the faithful the assent and obedience that the faithful are to give to those Pastors of souls who have been appointed with a Canonical mission and office, and to whom jurisdiction has been delegated by the local Ordinary, acting with the authority of the Roman Pontiff.

The SSPX clergy do not posses any jurisdiction as if it were habitual or delegated, but they exercise the jurisdiction that the Church herself supplies them during those individual instances wherein the spiritual welfare of the faithful demand it.

As I have written again and again against certain sedevacantists, the already problematic predicament of the traditionalist clergy has been made all the more labyrinthine and perilous by certain polemicists who ascribe to the acephalous clergy the formal Apostolicity and the possession and exercise of habitual or delegated jurisdiction that can only be found in a cleric endowed with a Canonical mission and office by authority of the Supreme Pontiff (directly in the case of Episcopal consecrations, and through the duly appointed local Ordinaries or Religious Superiors in the case of Sacerdotal ordinations and ordinations to the Diaconate and the ecclesiastical Minor Orders).

A consistent sedevacantist, for example, would admit that it is precisely because the Apostolic See is vacant (according to their understanding) that no traditionalist Bishop can claim both formal and material apostolicity: only the latter can be ascribed to them without infringing the ecclesiological doctrines taught by the theologians and manualists of past ages and enshrined in the Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope Benedict XV in the Apostolic Constitution Providentissima Mater (27 May 1917; A.A.S., vol. IX, pars II.).

The reality is that the clerici acephali, the episcopi vagantes, of our day may have ostensibly imperiled their salvation in risking the possibility of incurring serious censures and scandal, as well as committing sacrilege and mortal sin in having attained to the sacred Episcopacy contrary to the norms of Canon Law (cf. Can. 953: “Consecratio episcopalis reservatur Romano Pontifice ita ut nulli Episcopo liceat quemquam consecrare in Episcopum, nisi prius constet de pontificio mandato;” Can. 2370: “Episcopus aliquem consecrans in Episcopum, Episcopi vel, loco Episcoporum, pres-byteri assistentes, et qui consecrationem recipit sine apostolico mandato contra praescriptum Can. 953, ipso iure suspensi sunt, donec Sedes Apostolica eos dispensaverit"), for they have been consecrated as Bishops, and have themselves consecrated other Bishops, without Apostolic mandate.

Although, because of a salutary and necessary application of the principles of epikeia, there is no moral culpability to be imputed to them in this regard, the fact remains that these Bishops and the clerics they have elevated to Sacred Orders have, strictly speaking, no proper ecclesiastical office nor ordinary jurisdiction (habitual or delegated) since they lack the requisite Canonical mission (cf. Can. 147: § 1. Officium ecclesiasticuм nequit sine provisione canonica valide obtineri. § 2. Nomine canonicae provisionis venit concessio officii ecclesiastici a competente auctoritate ecclesiastica ad normam sacrorum canonum facta).

It must be emphasized that the sacred Episcopate is subordinated unto the Supreme Pontiff in the order of jurisdiction (cf. 108, § 3: “Ex divina institutione sacra hierarchia  ratione ordinis constat Episcopis, pres-byteris et ministris; ratione iurisdictionis, pontificatu supremo et episcopatu subordinato; ex Ecclesiae autem institutione alii quoque gradus accesere” [emphasis mine]; Can. 109: “Qui in ecclesiasticam hierarchiam cooptantur, non ex populi vel potestatis saecularis consensu aut vocatione adleguntur; sed in gradibus potestatis ordinis constituuntur sacra ordinatione; in supremo pontificatu, ipsomet iure divino, adimpleta conditione legitimae electionis eiusdemque acceptationis; in reliquis gradibus iurisdictionis, canonica missione” [emphasis mine]).

Although the Bishops are truly doctors and teachers for those souls whose pastoral care they have undertaken or have been given, this is only so by reason of the authority of the Pope since the magisterial authority of the Bishops, whether collectively or singly, is dependent upon the jurisdictional and magisterial primacy of the Sovereign Pontiff (cf. Can. 1326: "Episcopi quoque, licet singuli vel etiam in Conciliis particularibus congregati infabillitate docendi non polleant, fidelium tamen suis curis commissorum, sub auctoritate Romani Pontificis, veri doctores seu magistri sunt” [emphasis mine]).

Moreover, Holy Mother Church, since the Sacred Council of Trent (Session XXIII, De reformatione, caps. 11, 13, 16), has ordained that all clergy are to be incardinated into a diocese or ingress unto Holy Religion (cf. Can. 111, § 1: “Quemlibet clericuм oportet esse vel alicui dioecesi vel alicui religioni adscriptum, ita ut clerici vagi nullatenus admittantur” [emphasis mine]).

One must therefore conclude that all the present day traditionalist clerics are clerici vagi. Supplied jurisdiction given by the Church in the various individual instances wherein acts that are necessary for the spiritual welfare of the faithful need to be performed in both the internal and external fora are all that the present-day clerics can claim solely relying on the prudent application of the principles of epikeia. In going any further than this, they risk transgressing the limitations of their limited competence (in order of ecclesiastical authority) and exacerbate their problematic Canonical predicament all the more. It is precisely because the present day clerics do not have a Canonical mission that they cannot publicly bind individual consciences to their private opinions or practical judgments, save insofar as they conform with the doctrines and customs sanctioned by Holy Mother Church. Nor can they ascribe to themselves the dignities and prerogatives of the Bishops and Priests that ruled over the faithful in ages past by authority of the Supreme Pontiff.

Normally, the Bishops and Priests would be given unquestionable credibility and authority, but, precisely because the Roman Pontiff is presently out of the equation in the practical order (according to the sedevacantists and to the non-sedevacantists, though for different reasons), such can no longer be the case. In doing otherwise, one would perhaps substantiate the anti-sedevacantists' claims that the sedevacantist faithful discard the reverence and veneration due to the Papacy alone, whilst adhering to the vagrant clerics in an irony that is absurdly  bereft of the sensus Catholicus.

To assert the contrary would be tantamount to subscribing to the impious ecclesiology of the formally condemned Hussites who denied the necessity of a visible head for the Church Militant, "For there is not a spark of evidence that there should be one head ruling the Church in spiritual affairs, which head always lives and is preserved with the Church militant herself" (Denziger, no. 653). It would be the adulterous espousal of the errors condemned by the Œcuмenical Council of Constance (Session XV, 6 July 1415) and by Pope Martin V in the Bulls Inter cunctas and In eminentis (22 February 1418).

In positing a species of "ecclesial solipsism" whereby there can be ascribed to the conglomerate of acephalous and vagrant clerics a sort of anti-hierarchical aseity, one would be imitating the modus operandi of the very modernists whom the traditionalist clergy professedly oppose: they too have undermined and subverted the divinely-established hierarchical constitution of the Church, which is inexorably bound and subject to the indisputable primacy that is proper to the Roman Pontiff alone.

Just because the Johannine-Pauline structures cannot be identified with the Ecclesia Christi, does not necessitate resorting to historicist and revisionist interpretations of what the theologians have taught in order to assuage those doubts that continue to haunt us, nor for the clergy to lord over the faithful their birettas in order to condition them in a "hermeneutic of Pavlovian entrapment" that, far from being "obedience," undermines it so devastatingly in light of the ecclesiological doctrines of the theologians of the Church.


What one sedevacantist has said on other matters, may apply in this case:

The traditional clergy act out of charity. A properly "sent" cleric acts out of justice. We are obliged to obey canonically regular clergy, we have no such obligation to "traditional" clergy. The fact that most people have no notion of this doesn't make it any less true.

I am sure that the "respectable" clergy are following their consciences and have true vocations. But the whole point is that in each case we have to make a judgement, don't we?

We do not have the assurance of the Church that each and every priest or bishop has a true vocation, and has received the requisite training (in fact, we know that many of them didn't receive the requisite training, since they told us so themselves!), and most importantly was received into the ranks of the clergy by the public authority of the Church herself and given a mission.

That is what is lacking. And that is why we have to form our own judgements about each of them and assure ourselves that they are good priests or bishops whom we trust with our souls and those of our children.

It's a state of emergency. Somewhat organised chaos!

Being "sent" is receiving not just the approval of the Church, but the authorisation to act in her name. So these men cannot act in the name of the Church in the way that a priest with a mission does. They cannot issue commands which we must obey; they cannot preach in the technical sense of that word - that is, they can act as informal witnesses to the faith, as any layman does when he professes the faith, but they cannot "promulgate" the faith as a law, which is what a pastor does.

If the SSPX Fathers are to be faithful to the devout endeavors of Archbishop Lefebvre, they ought to understand that prayer and zeal for the glory of God and salvation of souls is to be uppermost, inherently exclusive to any dynamic of "ecclesial politik."

If they believe that the crisis presently assailing Holy Mother Church consists in Pavlovian propoganda, then they are sorely mistaken, and arethereby profaning the memory of Archbishop Lefebvre.

Now that the repeated "talks with Rome" leave Benedict XVI no excuse to plead ignorance for the prevarications whereby he (and the Johannine-Pauline construct) has scandalized the faithful, prayer and prayer alone remains for the faithful layfolk and clergy of the SSPX.

Msgr. Charles Journet, in fact, in his work The Church of the Word Incarnate: An Essay of Speculative Theology (trans. A.H.C. Downes; London: Sheed and Ward, 1954) discusses prayer as the ultimate and sole remedy for a bad Pope.