Overall is the SSPX growing or shrinking?  I believe it is growing, albeit slowly.

It's growing because of the # of children born to parents and also due to the admittance of novus ordoites.  The problem is that the sspx has taken the view of "quantity over quality" for the last 2 decades.  They admit anyone who "wants the latin mass" and do not have strict standards for newbies, who never learn the total depth of V2's problems.  Thus, the sspx now is full of "conservative (former) novus ordoites" and many lukewarm sspx'ers.  All the staunch anti-V2'ers have left (and most of the anti-V2 priests have been kicked out). 

Yes, it's growing, but it's not moving in the right direction, so it's growth is irrelevant.

Is the SSPX fragmenting?  Is there a uber liberal faction of the SSPX that wants to split away from the conservative faction?  The SSPX has always had small breakaway groups.  I've nothing against the resistance breaking away, if they are worried about a potential deal with Rome, but they should acknowledge that no deal was done by Fellay.  Until a deal actually happens and the terms and conditions are understood and the SSPX has clearly made an unacceptable compromise, then I am left wondering what exactly is being resisted?

The sspx is analogously in the period between 1962 and 1969, when thinking of the interim period between the Traditional Mass and the introduction of the novus ordo.  So many changes/experimentations happened during these 7 years that the Faith of the people was changed even before the new mass was unveiled.

The sspx has adopted a policy of interacting with roman officials, diocean bishops and diocesan priests on a grand scale, and on a weekly/daily basis.  Just as roman officials were "friendly" with modernists/protestants and had "concelebrations" with heretics in the 60s, so the sspx has made "friends" with the novus ordo both in theory and in practice.  Once a "deal is made", the change and subversion of the sspx will have already been accomplished.

The resistance (and the sspv groups) are just like the Traditionals of the 60s and 70s - they see the writing on the wall long before the sun has set.  This is not to chastise those who react "as it happens" (some people don't have the gift of anticipating or 'reading the tea leaves') but many times (as history has shown) the reactionaries are way too late, and unprepared for the chaos, whereas the visionaries were prepared to fight the battle and survive, since they saw the fight coming.

The calls and the doom from 2013/14/15 have not panned out.

They absolutely have.  The sspx leaders (and their modernist friends) just changed tactics (but not their course) and have decided to be patient.  The frog will still be boiled, but just not as quickly.

My experience of Resistance members' families in the UK is that they are smaller than the average SSPX member taken as a mean, modal or median average.  I know of a couple of big families but I know of lots of small families and unmarried people and people who were shacked up and fornicating in their 20s and 30s and came back to the SSPX when their Halcyon days were over and now I believe are over-compensating.  You see this frequently with reverts and converts like they are trying to make up for lost time.

The resistance is mainly measured by its priests and bishops, and their principles.  The Traditional laity (of any group) can hardly encompass an accurate measure of the group's worth.  (This is even true of Catholicism pre-V2.  The "fewness of the saved" means that the majority of Catholics are horrible examples of Christ's Truth.)

Good question.

Otherwise it would be an echo chamber.

It's quite clear to me how much easier my life would be on the surface had I not made certain decisions to obey the Church rather than the world. Some people can hide a ruinous conscience better than others. You really can't base too much on casual observation.

Interesting I have the opposite view.  The only thing that convinces me the Church is correct is that by not fornicating, sacrificing my life to material gain (I earn a lot but I buy clothes in charity shops and second hand on ebay), I've had a better life (easier in many ways compared to divorced men).  I've seen people earn 3 times what I make and have less at 50 after the stress and a couple of ex-wives have got their share.  They fork a lot over to buy their children's attention (affection).

Going to mass on Sunday seems a small price to pay.  Not contracepting is a great idea (at least for me) because I like a big family, gives me something to wake up for.  Also keeps my wife on the straight and narrow.

Most decisions are based on casual observation.  What other type of observation is there?

My observation is over a period of 40 years of exclusive Trad mass attendance without a break and across 3 continents.  How "casual" is that and how could it be any less casual?  If it were over 60 years you could claim I was old and going senile.

If I paid for a scientific study and showed hard data to back up my hypothesis then I'd be accused of being "crypto Jєω" and faking the data or hand-picking my samples.  "After all", people would say, "why would anyone go the that expense unless they had a hidden agenda?"

Time will tell.  But for the tiny size of the resistance the various groups sure seem to have a lot of rancour.

Interesting I have the opposite view.  The only thing that convinces me the Church is correct is that by not fornicating, sacrificing my life to material gain (I earn a lot but I buy clothes in charity shops and second hand on ebay), I've had a better life (easier in many ways compared to divorced men).  I've seen people earn 3 times what I make and have less at 50 after the stress and a couple of ex-wives have got their share.  They fork a lot over to buy their children's attention (affection).

Ha well, yes your mileage may vary there. Look deeper into many worldly success stories and you start to see the dysfunction. Sometimes you don't even need to look deeper because the penalty for sin has already shown itself. But we must admit there are some cases where it's completely hidden from all but the ones involved. I myself wouldn't trade my happiness for the world, no matter how much more I might have gained in some areas. A clear conscience is too hard to come by and I'm not good at hiding how miserable I can get without it.

Most decisions are based on casual observation.  What other type of observation is there?

It's casual because we're only skimming the surface of what it means to be successful. Real success is to be had through spiritual warfare and unless you know the person very well, you might never guess. So while I urge you not to get too carried away with your judgement of those struggling, I also recognize that those who are higher up on the socio-economic scale shouldn't be written off either. Fortuna finem habet: all good fortune has an end (or purpose). Some of our greatest saints came from affluent and powerful families, but in the end it's how they used their natural gifts and graces to reach for supernatural ones.

Time will tell.  But for the tiny size of the resistance the various groups sure seem to have a lot of rancour.

It only seems that way because these places are accessed by people of a certain restless tenacity. I think by and large that's a good thing because it brought us to tradition. The downside is that our eagerness and our grip often exceeds our ability to weigh things out. Part of being human, right? It goes with the territory in my opinion.

Ha ha.  I don't think St Patrick would let beer rain in Ireland...they deserve a "beer drought" (not draught) of a year or 2 for their acceptance of abortion.

Forget the beer drought, just 3 days after the new law on abortion came into effect,
the snake came back to Ireland.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/is-it-mere-coincidence-that-a-serpent-c

You forgot that Poche is just fine with those things.  Therefore, it makes sense that he would want to get rid of resistance to them.

I am fine with the evaporation of modernism and if Heaven rains beer I would like to know where so that I  could move there.
8) 8) 8)

The only members of S.S.P.X are its religious and third order laity, to state there is growth among them, that it is in the wrong direction, really is foolish.

I was talking about the laity.

The growth among laity is to have their right to the sacraments satisfied, and to say this right being satisfied is in the wrong direction is foolish.

  Disagree.  People in the sspx are being given the sacraments but not the Faith.

It is only the rights of the laity to be satisfied by the religious, S.S.P.X. exists, and it is the only necessary standard.  To learn the depth of Vatican II's problems, when on the side of the solution, is superfluous.  

One saves their soul by KNOWING the Faith, living it and spreading it.  Vatican 2's goal was to destroy the Faith, which it did.  Most people don't know their Faith, thus they split their time between the sspx, the indult and the novus ordo and don't see a difference.  This lack of awareness will hinder people from salvation.

The need of S.S.P.X. to interact and be friends with Roman officials, is critical since non-members of S.S.P.X. remain the territory of their respective diocese or parish, it is imperative that their rights to the sacraments are again able to be satisfied in their respective diocese and parish.  

The new-sspx says that catholics CAN receive their sacraments in their local parishes.  So why the need for the sspx at all?

Some of these interactions between the diocese and S.S.P.X. locations feasibly exist as a consequent of canon law, which is foolish to reject as members of The Latin Church.

 I don't understand.

I watched a Fulton Sheen lecture.  He related a story.  In so many words, he said, the boy saying God made so many things, that is what God does; God makes things.  If Jesus Christ were God, then He would have made other Jesus's, but He didn't and that's why there is no God.  That boy is right, said Bishop Fulton Sheen, but I'll go ahead and take "horrible examples of Christ's truth" anyway.  We are made in that image of Jesus Christ, and if no one else sees that, then it is hard to know that Jesus Christ is real, but slowly to the satisfaction of a Latin Church member, and their rights to the sacrament: they convert through The Eucharist, to be Christ-like.

We are all called to be Saints and examples of Christ.  Those modernists in rome and all around the world, who run the dioceses, hate Christ.  So, we avoid them and their heresies.  For the sspx leaders to "make friends" with heretics and Christ-haters is an abomination and has no practical positives because it teaches the laity that it is ok to associate with error and to tolerate evil.  We are the Church militant and we must defend Truth.  Charity to God (i.e. defense of Truth) is higher than human charity. 

(All of this assumes the sspx leaders aren't trying to destroy the sspx and that they are just "being nice" to non-catholics....which is a perspective harder and harder to swallow).