CathInfo.com

It's just as Bishop Stobnicki stated at the outset:

The group holding power in the SSPX have decided to stage a drama, unfortunately not a good Shakespearean play, but a poor play by Fernandez. They will follow two narratives: one for liberals, the other for hardliners. Unfortunately, nothing has changed for many years – secret meetings with the Roman hierarchy and the search for a practical agreement without doctrinal agreement.

I couldn't agree more.  They've already pre-scripted how this will turn out.  Governments do this all the time, and the SSPX "leadership" have come more politicians than defenders of the faith.  It happened during the last Iran-Israel conflict.  At some point Israel needed out, since Iran were clobbering them, but Israel couldn't just back down and admit defeat and weakness, so they pre-arranged from Trump to come in and "twist" Netanyahu's arm into agreeing (reluctantly) to a truce ... when it Bibi was in fact begging for Trump to come in and save them in such a way as to not make Netanyahu and Bibi look weak.  Israel declared victory, lying about the extent of the damage, claiming that only a single Arab goat-herder got hit by Iranian missiles, and that the only reason Israel backed down was because Trump applied strong pressure, not that they were getting their butts kicked.

Rome will acknowledge that Fr. Pagliarani needs to give the impreession of being a "strong man" ... for the internal consumption of the public, since he needs to be in a position to lead the SSPX to where they both have agreed long ago that it should.  If you undermine Fr. Pagliarani's authority, or perception of authority, or credibility, then you're actually crippling his ability to get the job done of bringing SSPX back into the fold.

At a time they deem opportune, there will be a deal (in reality behind closed doors there's already a deal), where Rome will give permission for certain select individuals to be consecrated, all in the interests of "mercy" and to show how good and wonderful they are, but just as a concession to prevent "schism" (and the question will be begged that had SSPX gone forward it would have been schism).  In the meantime, Fr. Pagliarani gives the impression to the more conservative elements within SSPX of being a strong man and not having compromised, of having gotten Rome to give in, where he would have gone ahead without permission had it been necessary.  So they'll appease the growing liberal / Motarian wing of SSPX and at the same time throw a bone to the conservatives that this was no "compromise" but was actually Rome giving in to strongman Fr. Pagliarani.

It's becoming very widely applied outside of wrestling to indicate any kind of public spectacle involving a pretense of opposition between two groups.  Often it's used to describe how in public the Republicans and Democrats appear to be at war, but then they're really all on the same team, simply playing different public roles.

Very interesting. I didn't know this. Thanks.