Before we commence with the pearl clutching and fainting couches, by last net count I believe the SSPX has actually gained priests among its ranks since July. This hardly seems a "devastating indictment" to me.
The shocking departure of a former European SSPX district superior, just months after the Society’s schismatic episcopal consecrations, looks like a devastating indictment of the direction it has taken. But it is where he has chosen to go that makes this development truly extraordinary...and raises some profoundly uncomfortable questions for the SSPX leadership.
Fr Patrick Duverger, formerly the SSPX district superior for Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, has left the Society and been welcomed into a traditional Latin Mass community served by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), under the authority of the local diocesan bishop. His successor, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry, was among the four men consecrated bishops by the SSPX in July, without the authorisation of Pope Leo XIV.
Consider the historical irony. In 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre's illicit episcopal consecrations precipitated the departure of priests who founded the FSSP precisely because they believed that fidelity to the traditional liturgy could not justify separation from Rome. Thirty-eight years later, following another set of episcopal consecrations, a former SSPX district superior has found a home in the very Fraternity born of that original rupture. We do not yet know whether the July consecrations prompted Duverger's decision, and it would be premature to suggest an exodus. But his departure follows that of another former European district superior, Fr Firmin Udressy, who left in 2024 after more than twenty years of priestly service. Udressy's own explanation was revealing: he had come to desire a priesthood exercised in genuine communion with the Church's hierarchy and the universal Church.
Let's be clear, this is not a dispute between those who love tradition and those who despise it, these are priests formed by the SSPX, deeply attached to the Catholic inheritance, who have nevertheless chosen to exercise their priesthood within the Church's recognised structures. Surely therein lies the uncomfortable ecclesiological question the SSPX cannot indefinitely evade: at what point does an extraordinary response to a crisis become a permanent alternative to the Church's own authority?
Catholic tradition is not a possession to be defended against the Church, nor is communion with Peter some optional administrative arrangement that can be suspended until Rome becomes sufficiently agreeable. Apostolic tradition and apostolic communion belong together.
There are legitimate grievances about the treatment of traditional Catholics, and Rome must take them seriously. But the failures of ecclesiastical authority cannot become a justification for establishing a parallel ecclesial existence.
The tragedy would be for a movement founded to preserve Catholic tradition to lose sight of something essential to that tradition: the Church is not merely where the ancient liturgy is celebrated, but where the Catholic faith is professed cum Petro et sub Petro — with Peter and under Peter.
1
9
233
This is an *extremely* dishonest framing considering the vast majority of those who left the SSPX were the founding members of the FSSP in (wait for it) 1988.
Come on now.
This quoted post is unavailable.
16
323
No, we’re not playing this game any longer. We’re not doing the thing where you get to accuse people who criticize Israel as “Jew haters”, because you people have cried wolf on this for so long that the term is meaningless.
If Israel wants to go after Iran, they’re welcome to do so on their own without the U.S, thank you very much.
Zionist boomers are incapable of breaking free of their programming. It's sad, but not surprising.
Why should we believe that *this* time Iran was *this* close to having a nuke when Netanyahu has been dropping that line since the 90s?
That is a stupid lie. See Sen Kennedy on Theo Vonn. The intel before the war was very clear. Iran would soon have a bomb and could reach Europe with it and the US also. Tulsi is a retard.
1
7
384
Haven't you people done enough to discredit yourselves? Seriously? Did you not get the message from the massive ass whooping you were handed on Tuesday?
Grow up.
Way to spoil the big twist in the third act regarding certain characters, Nintendo. Although I suppose the entire internet knows by now, even though this game is for new players as well who don't know the plot, I hope.
Congrats to the English voice cast of Ocarina of Time! What a joy to be part of such a legendary game!
Do any of the voice actors sound familiar to you? 👀
523
I'm in Ohio, and I'll tell you exactly what happened in Ohio, specifically, setting aside any feelings voters may have had toward the president and his policies:
Vivek was a horrible gubernatorial candidate. As in, quite possibly the worst I've seen in my lifetime. From the jump, it was obvious he had nothing but contempt for working class, white, native-born Ohioans (cf. his infamous Twitter crashout of Christmas 2024) and acted as if he were the smartest man in the room when he had nothing on his resume to back up such arrogance. And then, to top it off, he was the victim of his own October surprise by stupidly launching a blame-the-rape-victim campaign against Acton and then, astonishingly, doubling and even tripling down on it in spite of the backlash.
Vivek's utter incompetence and unlikability completely torpedoed the GOP down ballot, turned off potential Husted voters (who has his own problems), and kept huge swaths of the people he needed to show up at home instead. That's what happened.
It's never Trump's fault according to these people. Never.
If something good happens, he gets all the credit in their mind. If something bad happens due to his stupid decisions and behavior, it's an endless conspiracy against him.
Excuse making like this (along with a terrible economy and an unpopular war) is a large reason why independents said "No thank you" to more of this.
"Had to happen?" You and all the Catholic conservatives who've spend the last nearly two years poisoning minds against him, insisting that Iran wasn't really a threat and he was just seeking his own glory.... you helped make that happen. It didn't have to happen.
You really are that naive that you believe the Iran war was the product of his vainglory and not a response to a real threat? That the same people who willingly and deliberately unleashed a virus and vaccines onto the world, who participated in mass murder in order to keep their power, were not willing to do something even more drastic and destructive to continue keeping it?
Was he supposed to just ignore the virus and its potential threat first term? And what would you be saying if he brushed aside the obvious threats Iran - and their Chinese and Globalists enablers - were clearly sending this second term? You honestly don't think they'd have set off some limited level nuclear weapon in an American city if he ignored the threats?
There's only one thing worse than naivety: the pride that enables it to prevail. It didn't "have to happen." You participated in making it happen.
5
18
704
Now this is just both really cool and really depressing at the same time, as it makes me realize just how old I am.
I remember the halcyon days of the mid-to-late 90s when the internet looked like this, and when social media wasn't a thing, and when something as technically primitive as Ocarina of Time is to us now was a mind-blowing experience.
(Yes, I am going to get the remake when it comes out on Thursday. So don't bother me!)
If you search 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time' on Google and click the Master Sword, you are transported back to how Google looked in 1998.
1
9
544
“I’m not going into the weeds here”
Then why make blanket statements about the Holy Ghost’s “spirit” being equivalent to whatever an ecumenical council teaches, then? If you can’t handle someone pointing out flaws in your argument, maybe blogging isn’t for you.
Rod, you see error and that is your point. But my assertion has never been that there are no human flaws in documents from this or any Council. I'm not going into the weeds here or else we'd have to put all the councils on the table. You're missing the point to make your own
1
23
620
I don’t think I’m the one who is “struggling” to understand Catholicism here. I’m not the one who posts bizarre statements on just who or what guides councils, then proceeds to refuse to elaborate or clarify precisely what I mean when other people highlight the problematic implications of such an argument.
Sounds like you’re struggling to understand Catholicism. You’ve talked yourself into an uncomfortable corner.
1
29
735
Maybe Montini should have, I don’t know, actually read the texts he was approving before promulgating them, or changed them after the fact instead of whining about them like a little girl who has no power to change anything.
Even Paul VI was not a fan of the new funeral rite. In 1971 he commented after Mass to his MC:
"How on earth in the liturgy for the dead should there be no more mention of sin and expiation? There is a complete absence of imploring the Lord’s mercy. This morning too, for the Mass celebrated in the [Vatican] tombs, although the texts were beautiful they were still lacking in the sense of sin and the sense of mercy. But we need this! And when my final hour comes, ask for mercy for me from the Lord, because I have such need of it!”
Every year, the priests of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris spend nearly six hours offering their three private low Masses for All Souls Day back to back, and it's one of the most profoundly spiriritual things I've ever experienced.
I know low Masses get criticized by liturgical purists, but there's something to be said about the ability to simply walk into this church at any point during said six hour period and stumble upon a priest offering Mass for the dead, especially when so many churches in Europe are more museum pieces than worship spaces.
youtube.com/watch?v=UoVR-MVr…
The point, Melody, is that at Lateran IV, an ecumenical council with just as much authority as Vatican II, its canons defined orthodoxy as discriminating against Jews. Period. Full stop.
You can try to weasel out of your own standards by claiming "That was disciplinary, not infallible" but then you've just given trads the green light to reject Sacrosanctum as merely "disciplinary" and "pastoral" for the same reasons, so just what point is it you think you've made, exactly?
Following up on my earlier observation re this person, it seems patently obvious from this tweet that she has absolutely no idea what Lateran IV taught.
"Theology by feels" isn't a thing, no matter how much she seems to want it to be.
Well, you're in luck since the Holy Spirit was working there, too... and continues still. Veni Sancte Spiritus!
2
30
853
I wonder if Melody thinks the "Spirit of Lateran IV" was the Holy Ghost actively willing the prohibition of Jews from holding public office and having to wear identifying clothing.
I mean, if this is the game we're gonna play, then let's be consistent.
Your role as laity is to pay, pray, and obey, no matter how much Rome pays lip service to the contrary. Where did you get the idea our bishops and cardinals actually think the laity should have any sort of agency or self determination when it comes to, say, which liturgy is best for their parish?
2
24
770
It's always the laity's fault. Always. So if something bad happens in the Church, it's because you, the layman with zero authority or power to change things, failed somehow.
Glad we're all clear on that.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm taking a break from daily liturgical posting. I've done it for over six years now, and I'm burned out.
I've done some consulting work/editing for the 2027 edition of a popular 1962 Ordo; I would suggest that as a resource for the 1962 rubrics, and Rubricarius's St. Lawrence Press Ordo is the gold standard for pre-55 (aside from the fact that he doesn't recognize anything after 1939, so you won't get the 1940-55 Pius XII changes in that resource).
I can answer occasional questions on specific issues is anyone is interested, but that's it for the foreseeable future. I apologize again, but I just can't do it anymore.