On the contrary. Unfortunately, that's how we tell where the Church is. And my walking out the door would not even be noticeable, in fact plays into 'their' hands.
You'll notice no effort was made to stop the en'masse exodus of the faithful after VII - people who just walked out and never came back. Just like them, I don't think the Church cares if you ever come back either. I do.
I don't particularly pray for protestants to come back, but I do pray for seperated Catholics. Don't die outside the Church - just maybe you are mistaken where the Church is. Maybe I am also, it's not so easy these days.
The thing is, don't allow your zeal of activism to cloud your good judgement. Just maybe you don't have the complete answer. Correct theology is only part of the puzzle, and unless we know the mind of God, may be only a small part. Were the martyrs in the catacombs, who weren't privy to our theology any less Catholic? Are they in the new Limbo waiting for the second coming? I don't think so.
I'm not saying to join the Novus Ordo, just.......
Nonsense. The Church is not always where Peter is, as the pious saying would have it. It certainly was not in Pope Alexander's bedroom when he dallied with his mistress. Your problem is a confusion of the two. The deposit of faith is what is paramount, not the papacy which is charged with protecting it.
Instead of decreeing the status of SSPX by your own opinion, perhaps you should pay attention to what is coming out of Rome. Someone is in schism, but it isn't SSPX.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1105698/posts?page=15
Cardinal Hoyos:
His Eminence the Cardinal President of the ED Commission in the Congregation for the Clergy. ……The Cardinal received us quite friendly and gave us a whole hour of his time. He made an emphasis that he loves the Ancient Rite which he had celebrated himself between his ordination in 1952 and 1965.
The Cardinal repeated that they dropped any idea to give us a proper jurisdiction. He mentioned that such a proper jurisdiction had only been granted to the Fraternity of St John Vianney at Campos, as the founder of that Fraternity, Bishop de Castro Mayer, had gone much farther than Archbishop Lefebvre. The Cardinal underlined that Archbishop Lefebvre had never founded a proper structure of his fraternity that could be considered as a concrete act of schism. 3-13-04
Cardinal Cassidy: "The situation of the members of this Society is an internal matter of the Catholic Church. The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community in the meaning used in the Directory" (letter dated May 3, 1994).
Count Neri Capponi: "This act [of episcopal consecration on June 30, 1988] was not, per se, schismatic" (Latin Mass Magazine, May/June 1993).
Bishop Fellay went on to say that an archbishop in the curia had told him, "Don't make an agreement with Rome now. The time is not right. The Pope is no longer governing the Church. We need you to stay where you are and to stand firm in defense of the Faith."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1284342/posts
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Novus Ordo schism
And Mahony knows just what he is doing," continued the ecclesiastic. "Exactly. Right now Mahony is the leader of the American schism.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1280800/posts
Since you mentioned St. Athanasius as a model for traditionalists, let's see what he has to say.
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Letter of St. Athanasius to his flock
(St. Athanasius lived in the fourth century and was the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for 46 years. Banned from his diocese at least five times, he spent a total of 17 years in exile. The famous convert to the Church, John Henry Cardinal Newman, described him as a “principal instrument after the Apostles by which the sacred truths of Christianity have been conveyed and secured to the world.” Often referred to as the Champion of Orthodoxy, St Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most courageous defenders of the faith in the entire history of the Church. If anyone can be singled out as a saint for our times, surely it is St. Athanasius. The following letter of his could, almost word for word, have been written yesterday.)
May God console you!…What saddens you…is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises—but you have the apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle—the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?
True, the premises are good when the apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way…
You are the ones who are happy: you who remain within the church by your faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis.
No one, ever, will prevail against your faith, beloved brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from It and going astray.
Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.