Glory be to God the Lord Almighty that Tradition is returning to Central America after forty years of Protestant infiltration and the devastation wrought by the "theology of liberation."

I had the pleasure of visiting an SSPX chapel in Guatemala City, Guatemala last week and was pleasantly surprised to see that the information given in the directory of churches, chapels, and schools which I received with this year's Churches of Rome calendar is completely out of date.

It lists one chapel in Guatemala and in reality there are three Mass centers and even a priory there. The Mass I attended was full, with people even seated outside in the vestibule area. It was a missa cantata which overseas is more prevalent than the silent Low Mass preferred here. The Father gave an excellent sermon lasting one hour during which no one, not even the children present, so much as cleared their throat. The bookstore was loaded with good Catholic literature in Spanish, and the Father gave me about five hundred copies of a pamphlet in Spanish titled, Cristo fundó una Sola Iglesia:  La Iglesia Católica.  Pruebas Bíblicas e históricas, or in English, "Christ founded One Church: the Catholic Church.  Biblical and Historical Proof." It is an excellent refutation of Protestanism.

The Father also spoke briefly about a scandal caused by some Englishmen who had visited there and/or contacted some of the parishioners, spreading the old false canard about Abp. Lefebvre not having been validly ordained/consecrated by Abp. Lienart. Apparently these same crazy "home-aloner" types are active south of the border as well!

This was the first Tridentine Mass which my daughter and her cousins were priveleged to attend. I had expected some resistance from them, as they had been previously exposed only to the Novus Ordo, but to my astonishment they were delighted with the Mass and did their best to sing along with the Latin responses using the booklets the chapel provided. Afterwards they had their new rosaries blessed by the Father and we were all enrolled in the Miraculous Medal. That same night I saw a difference in their recitation of the rosary and my daughter, may God be praised, for the first time began asking me serious questions about the Faith. (She attends a Catholic convent school and assumes she knows everything already. She is also seventeen years old which doesn't help.)

Thus is removed the last obstacle to my return to the area where I spent most of my adult life. I now have access to the true Mass and the traditional Faith there in Guatemala and also at two locations in El Salvador, and according to the parishioners there, the Fathers have celebrated Mass in the other Central American countries and eventually, God willing,  will open chapels there too.  Truly the despair I had been occasionally feeling here at the downward slide of our society and the faithlessness of so many American Catholics has been alleviated, at least partially. There is still a lot of work to do.

I hope that all of us have the chance to travel and see that we are not alone in our efforts. Please pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe for the restoration of Tradition to all of the Americas, North and South.  

God bless,

Jude

That's why the French bishops in particular were so opposed to the Motu.  Evidently, the Novus Ordo is in real danger there of being overtaken by SSPX.

I read somewhere that 20% of all Catholics sitting in the pews of a French church on a typical Sunday are at an SSPX chapel.

A quick perusal of an SSPX European website shows dozens of chapels in France and Germany, and expansion into Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic and even Belarus. No wonder the liberals are nervous! If this keeps up they'll soon be out of a job.  

Now perhaps in Latin America, if God so wills, we shall see the same phenomenon but on an even larger scale, since the penetration of liberal/secular ideas has been less heavy there, in particular among the rural poor and the traditional land-owning classes. I believe, perhaps naively, that a lot of Catholics there, when exposed to the Church's traditional liturgy and Sacraments, will respond favorably. Unlike modern Europeans and North Americans, supernatural faith is not lacking in most Latin Americans. They are not as closed to the workings of God as are so many of us.

I read somewhere that 20% of all Catholics sitting in the pews of a French church on a typical Sunday are at an SSPX chapel.

A quick perusal of an SSPX European website shows dozens of chapels in France and Germany, and expansion into Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic and even Belarus. No wonder the liberals are nervous! If this keeps up they'll soon be out of a job.  

Yes, the SSPX has a fairly strong presence in France, Switzerland, the lower part of the Rhineland and Bavaria. There is also a decent presence in Northern Italy and Austria, though there are hardly any TLMs south of Rome. I wonder if 19th and 20th Century Geo-politics play into which areas tend to be more favorable to Tradition and which are not. Most of Northern Italy was controlled by the Austrian Empire(HRE) and the Papal States until 1867/1870.  

I didn't know that Traditional Catholicism has a decent presence in the Czech Republic or Belorussia. That is good to see since the Czechs, even after the Counter-Reformation, still saw Hus as a national hero; and isn't Belorussia overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox?