I'm reminded of a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Bugs slams a door on his pursuers. As they beat on the door, he puts his back against it, strikes a mock 30s actress pose and says, "My public! They love me so."
I do think the Pope is a Catholic. He thinks that he is, and a man who can both make a completely relativist statement to Eugenio Scalfari, and denounce relativism to La Repubblica a few days later, probably doesn't have a clear enough understanding of the faith to deny it.
If you haven't seen them, there are a couple of pictures of +Fellay on sspx.org from the Angelus Press Conference. They clearly are from his remarks on the Pope, because his expression is of absolute stupefaction.
The previous comments on this string seem to fall into three buckets:
1. Those for whom involvement in the Resistance is a form of entertainmnt.
2. Those who talk about fighting Rome. Of them I ask: what are your proposed tactics?
3. Those who are looking to build a new SSPX under the leadership of Fr. Pfeiffer and his small handful of active clerical supporters. Of them I ask: what is the program of this organization? It will form priests. To do what? To join Frs. Hewko and Girouard in castigating the old SSPX, or something else, or some combination of the two?
All that needs to be said about the first bucket is that it isn't even Catholic.
What I want to know about the other two buckets is whether and to what extent they reflect a Catholic spirit. If their proponents can say something further about them, we might make some progress in figuring that out.
Hmm, hope I'm not feeding a troll here or something, but I will give you my own answer to this.
My idea of "fighting Rome" involves raising truly Catholic families, which result in true vocations if God wills it and more strong families that will populate heaven. It also involves NO COMPROMISE, and basically is patient, waiting for God's own time for Him to fix this terrible crisis in the Church.
I do not believe that the resistance is building a "new" SSPX. I believe they are carrying on what Archbishop Lefevbre had always done, and had intended the SSPX to be... basically where the "institutionalized" SSPX left off. The "more interested in money and property" craving to be "recognized and accepted" "human respect oriented" institutionalized SSPX has strayed from that, and the resistance are just carrying on what has been gradually left aside over several years. When/if the resistance should stray from that mission, I won't be with them anymore, just as I recognized the SSPX straying.
Being that I have never been a part of the institutionalized SSPX before (an independent Catholic), I was in a somewhat unique position. I recognized several years ago, instead of keeping my head buried in the sand as many, many people did, since we were unaffiliated with the SSPX, I kept up with what was going on in the SSPX before they systematically took over the independent Church I was attending until September of 2012. Recognizing the contradictions and the ambiguity came easily for me, being instructed for many years by a former SSPX priest, Fr. Bolduc, that this was occurring. In order to be consistent, I could not go along with what was going on, and thank God there were people standing against those inconsistencies and ambiguities, else I don't know what I would have done.
If the resistance should become inconsistent, or ambiguous, or begin to make compromises, I will swiftly leave their presence, just as if Fr. Bolduc had compromised, I would have abandoned him, too. Many of us don't want to go through "Vatican II redux." I don't know how you could blame us for that.