Posted on 03/11/2009 7:33:37 AM PDT by NYer
Well, we disagree on that one, they did leave the Church and find their faith in their own egos while saying it was in their own piety. They did commit adultery and they didn’t recognize John Paul II nor do they recognize Benedict XVI. If you have any doubt, I have dozens of their tapes and I would consider sending them to you if I could find them. I have hours of conversation with my SSPX friend.
It is pride and arrogance, with a mask of wannabe holiness, they weren’t willing to wait on the Holy Spirit they wanted a perfect church and they wanted it NOW or else they’d go play by themselves. And they had enough faith in themselves but they didn’t have enough faith that Jesus’ promise would be honored.
“What would your comparison be in application to a bishop who refuses to sanction proabort Catholic politicians or instructs the priests not to preach against contraception, but never formally disobeyed the Pope?”
First of all, it seems that you are assuming that they haven’t done it in private. We have a hierarchical church but they are NOT perfect, only God is and that is where SSPXers really failed, they left a void so that the Pelosis and the Bidens could have a louder voice while they muted their own.
We are the Body of Christ, each and every one of us is responsible for those in our parishes who are wrong headed and the way we can change them is to pray and wait on the Lord and Catechize them when God gives us the opportunity.
If it is a priest then the faithful must call them to task with love. Many saints have taken the priests, bishops and popes to task but you take them to task as one of your children and believe me some children are more stupid than others but God loves them too. You don’t hate them, you hate the deed, God will punish them if they deserve punishment and God-willing they will all be enlightened someday and God-willing they will have a very public enlightenment that will bring others of like mind back to the truth. It sometimes takes the example of horrible sinners to make an impact.
Let’s use Fr. Corapi as an example, do you not think that drug addicts and people who love the rich life listen more to him than they would to a priest who has always lived a holy life? They know he can understand them and if he can become a priest after publicly living a life of dissolution then they can also respond to God’s calling. Had you known Fr. Corapi in his wild days and seen him in church would you be judging him?
I have had people point out to me that some person who a lot of people know is doing something sinful went to communion and what did I think, I say it doesn’t matter what I think but what God thinks and NO, I don’t look to see who is going to Communion and who isn’t, it isn’t my business it is God’s. But, once again, if God gives me the opportunity to help them then I’m ready if God gives me the words. And He has!
I really would be okay with a priest denying a Pelosi or a Biden the Eucharist because while many sin they are sinning in a very public way and if they came to my parish, I would speak with the priest and ask him to talk to them in private and hopefully he would deny them as long as they were publicly sinning.
Just a thought, it is darned near impossible to keep them hypocrital sinners out of the Church!
This is something that Protestants usually say but you have to put your trust in Jesus. Do not despair, do not be afraid, do not worry, put it in God’s hands and try to discern His will in your life. Live your vocation the best you can with God’s help, ask to be an instrument, put yourself in the position to be an instrument and wait on the Lord and He will use you.
I know we’re only human and we want this perfectly spotless church where everyone is good and faithful and fully lives their vocation but even the Apostles walking alongside Jesus constantly messed up and didn’t get it. It was only after His death and the working of the Holy Spirit that they did get it.
If I have said “The gates of hell shall not prevail....” once to my SSPX friend, I’ve said it 10,000 times and if that is not true then what else is? While most of her friends and many of her relatives have abandoned her, I stick like glue because I feel that God made me her friend for a reason.
Sorry for the rambling, I have the flu and my mind is cloudy and my mind is not at its best.
Then they should have argued on that basis. Instead, they started their own cult.
SSPX as a whole is not sedevacantist. They recognize the papacy and do not dispute the validity of the modern popes. It could be that some sedevacantists also go to SSPX chapels, and would consider themselves part of the SSPX, but that is not the official SSPX position. So, there is no adultery.
On the rest of your post, I mostly agree. I myself have never been associated with SSPX for a variety of reasons. I think, however, that their position has been vindicated now and they have provided an invaluable service to the Church by insisting on the Latin Mass. Further, it is good that they are forcing a dialog on ecumenism and its limits. This in no way should diminish the excellent work the Catholic conservatives do while staying fully obedient to Rome, or excuse the excesses of which SSPX is demonstrably guilty. Conservative Catholics have a lot to celebrate with regularization of SSPX, and the liberal Catholics have a lot to fear.
Yes, Williamson was the only one who did it in a way that it publicly disseminated but many of the priests of the SSPX, are openly anti-Semetic.
“Mind you, however, that what SSPX really was objecting to was ecumenism crossing over to indifferentism, when the only orthodox form of ecumenism the Catholic Church should embrace is call to conversion, of non-Catholic Christians to Catholicism and of Jews and other non-Christians, to Christ. There were articles appearing in SSPX publications that highlighted the differences between Catholic Christianity and Judaism that might offend non-Catholics.”
There is nothing wrong with such a goal but they still despaired that the Holy Spirit would, or could do what the Holy Spirit does and what Jesus said and they thought that if they just isolated themselves from the stoopid other Catholics, they’d get it just right. Jesus made the Church to be one but their pride in their own motives and piety took them away from what we KNOW Jesus wanted to try to get people to do what they “thought” Jesus wanted.
Once again, lofty goals but the pride and arrogance made them think that a schism would help?!? That they could break the laws that they thought were breakable and then excoriate everyone else for breaking the laws that they held sacred? IMO, they became Pharisees, “look at me, I’m doing it the right way and you aren’t and ain’t I holy?!”
My SSPX friend’s cousin teaches Catechism and we were in the church one night and she jumped on a kid for not bowing deeply enough. Because I have RCIC my kids are really just learning all that stuff and they immediately came to my side almost frightened. Were they doing it wrong?
I told them that I didn’t watch each and everyone of them but I wanted to know where there heart was. I don’t care if you bow your head, if you bow at the waist, if you genuflect on your right knee, as long as you are showing respect and your heart is in the right place because if it isn’t, the actions are just a lie. It really hit home with my class because I have a disabled child who can’t genuflect on her right knee and kids are so literal.
People can appear all holier than thou but their hearts are rotting because they are relying on their own understanding, their own opinion of others and their own opinion of themselves when we should all be worrying about the opinion of God alone.
“Because the abuse came after the Council.”
I don’t know why I can’t let this go but I had more time to think on the way to and from Catechism.
I don’t think anyone but the most liberal Catholic would argue that there weren’t abuses. But there were abuses in the Church when Martin Luther decided that he was the one to fix them and outside of the Church to boot.
He told them what he thought needed to be addressed and when they didn’t listen to him immediately, he had the pride and arrogance to think that he could fix it himself and I’m sure he justified every move he made to himself. He just wanted a holy church and priesthood, he had a lofty goal but he thought he could fix it instead of waiting on the Holy Spirit and believing the promise of Christ. Martin Luther’s pride made him believe that he was doing the right thing.
No doubt, God can take any schism and use it for His plan, and good can come out of this schism if they are willing to return to the Body of the Church, submit themselves to their bishops and the pope. Is that happening yet? Do you perceive that it will happen? I still have my doubts because pride is a strong emotion and unless the Holy Spirit is very strong and they are inclined to listen, I don’t see a lot of these congregations returning to the fold. I hope I’m wrong. But history is, unfortunately, on my side.
I was formerly Russian Orthodox, which I think gives me a special insight in both how conservation of liturgy works, and how schisms work. The schism of 1054 was a pattern of the SSPX controversy more nearly so than the Reformation, except that this time through, both sides knew what to avoid.
The similarity with Protestantism is real, but it is limited to the disobedience factor. At the same time, much in the fruit of Vatican II invited Protestantism in substance; I would name the conscious desacralization of the Liturgy and encouragement of vaguely understood freedom of conscience. The result was desecrated altars, faithless priests, and the full of itself laity that did not know and did not care to know the Catholic faith. Naturally, millions left the Church. That was a disaster of major proportions, against the background of which I am willing to forgive excessive formalism.
The similarity with the Eastern Orthodoxy is more substantial: like the Orthodox, SSPX understood that the liturgical form defines the substance and that small, seemingly inconsequential changes, like turning the priest to face the congregation at the Eucharistic Prayer have profound consequences. This is why it is not simply a matter of disobedient pride. You cannot fix such schisms with a doze of obedience: a desire to return to the orthodox (small "o") form must be present in Rome. The reform must be reformed first.
The reform of the reform -- the healing of the abuses of Vatican II -- is palpable in Pope Benedict's pontificate. It became possible for SSPX to return after two initiatives came from Rome: the meaning of "church" and especially the evasiveness of "subsistit in" language of Lumen Gentium was clarified in RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH, and the Motu Proprio was issued restoring the Latin Rite. Ther conditions became right for the return of the SSPX.
Does it mean everyone at SSPX is happy? - No. Through the period of the Schism SSPX has accumulated a crew of followers that only care for the ornamental Baroque, are sedevacantist, or otherwise have peculiar and prideful reasons for not coming back. The schism, however, is about to be healed and the SSPX core will return.
On a larger scale, and much slower, the conditions necessary for the healing of the Great Eastern Schism are becoming more apparent. Again, it is not to say that the Orthodox laity en masse is prepared for reunification, -- they are not, but some Orthodox bishops are working toward it, and all by now are on notice that their stated desire to restore unity will be tested soon. In fact, just as the Great Eastern schism was a model for SSPX separation, so will the regularization of the SSPX be a model for the reunification with the East.
Both schisms served a divine purpose. SSPX forced the Church to reexamine and clarify Vatican II, and it preserved a cadre of priests ready to center the Church on the liturgy. The Eastern Orthodoxy -- now that it is a fact of life also in the West -- is a powerful witness against the so-called Reformation, because it validates the Catholic, hierarchical, liturgical character of the Early Church. Against the corrupting influence of modernity, both SSPX and the Easter Orthodox Churches were better off preserving the Tradition on their own for a while.
We live in very interestig times.
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