I've been watching the Crisis in the Church series by the SSPX. Every episode I've watched so far is excellent and clear as a bell. These priests are incredibly well formed and understand the issues and explain in a way that's easy to understand. They go into the history of the crisis and reasonable ways for the faithful to respond.
Episode 33 with Fr. Alexander Wiseman is on true and false obedience. The moderator calls this episode the "linchpin" of the whole series and I believe it is. All of the episodes are essential to understand where we are and how we got here, but this particular episode describes the parameters of true obedience around which everything else revolves.
The enemies of the Church (communists and freemasons) have always believed that they would destroy the Church through obedience. And they would certainly succeed if they could convince every Catholic to blindly follow authority even when that authority is taking them down the wide and easy path to hell.
BLIND OBEDIENCE is no virtue! To turn your will hook, line, and sinker over to a superior is wrong. Parents have authority over their children, bishops have authority over their dioceses, the pope has authority over the Church, but no one has an obligation to obey an unjust order or an order to sin. To demand someone commit a sin "under obedience" is an order that must always, always, always be disobeyed! It is a copout to say, as the Nazis did during the war trials, "I was just following orders."
I urge you to watch Fr. Wiseman's presentation. Take it in 30 minute blocks as if it is a catechism class. And pay attention to what Father says at the end:
All of this discussion is in service of the Catholic Faith. As Bishop Fellay said, we are here because we want to be Catholic ....It all comes down to that. - nothing more, nothing less. We simply want to be Catholics It has nothing to do with proving people wrong, wanting to be "rebels" or "prideful" or "rigid" - we simply want to worship God the way the Magisterium has told us over the centuries.... It's getting clearer and clearer as the days go by. More and more people are realizing, "Hey, there's a problem here." Where does it come from? What's the issue? For our part, we need to just keep saying the truth, also respecting the authority and realizing...that the Church is going to be the one to solve this. Rome has to step in in some way. I don't how it's going to look like, but Rome has to step in. That's the bottom line here. We want to be Catholic, nothing more nothing less.
I refuse to get wrapped up in arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. As psalm 130:1 says, "LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes arrogant; Nor do I involve myself in great matters, Or in things too difficult for me."
With the simple saints and peasants, the little shepherd children of Fatima, all the little people of the Church throughout the centuries, I just want to be Catholic and love the Lord. May God through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, my guardian angel and my patron saints give me the grace to be faithful until death.
Your post is timely. There is much coming out in recent days about this issue of obedience, true and false. I remember several years ago a friend telling me ‘If our Holy Father tells us to get the vaccine, we get the vaccine.’ Uh, no. That, my friends, is an excellent example of blind obedience. As children when we wanted to do something foolish that our friends were doing, our parents asked us, ‘And if your friends jumped off a cliff would you want to go, too?’ Today, people are lining up for their turn at the cliff.
ReplyDeleteThese are troubling times. The Crisis in the Church series is an excellent means of learning the history of how we got to where we are today with a clear path forward. Thank you, Mary Ann, for introducing me to this series through your posts!
How bless we are to have such wonderful priests to guide us during this troublesome time.
ReplyDeleteI thought SSPX Crisis series was excellent also. It very much impressed me w/the quality of the program and the quality of the SSPX priests. They have notes and transcripts - just really good program worthy of PBS/Educational institution. I should go back and re-view it since so much was new to me about the philosophical origins.
ReplyDeleteWOW thank you so much for posting this. I have a friend who is currently hooked up with a SSPX resistance priest. I was told the Society is full of modernism and caving in to the Vatican left and right. This video really disputes his claims and that really lifts the anvil off my shoulder. Because Chicago has no Latin mass most people will attend the SSPX chapel in oak park. One of my friends new to the Latin mass attended. She usually attends at St. John Cantus they have a tridentine mass, also do an english novus ordo and a latin novus ordo. Fathers sermon at the SSPX was about how the people who attend there once a month because of the first Sunday ban should be here every week. He said where they are going now they are novus ordo priests anyway. He also told them to read Archbishop Lefebre's letter to confused Catholics. This also refutes this resistance priest. When I told this to my friend who is aligned with the resistance priest he was quiet for 5 minutes then said, well they didn't find him out yet, they'll send him to South America once they do. The resistance group also claimed that where I go, the ICKSP, this same priest also claimed they must say one Novus ordo mass a year. I asked our canon and he was a little ticked off. He said, "why do people spread all these untrue rumors. There is noting in our constitution that requires us to read a novus ordo mass, most of don't even know how to say one". I now have serious doubts about this particular reistance priest. While I still think he is a devoted priest his politics seems to interfere with his priesthood. Why does he spread these untruths, bitterness? Mislead? Who knows/
ReplyDeleteI too have enjoyed the series. It begins where it should with an academic history of liberty and liberalism in the world and how it entered the Church. This could be terribly boring but the presentations are nothing short of brilliant and as Mary Ann said, clear as a bell.
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ReplyDeleteI recommend reading an editorial from the Canadian branch of the SSPX published in 2014. One of the reasons the SSPX remains in an "irregular" position is that they cannot accept the "condition" set by Rome to accept every jot and tittle of Vatican II. While most of the documents coming out of the council were orthodox and even inspiring, there were things that undermine the faith. Here's a section of the editorial that I found very interesting:
"We remain the only and last witnesses to the Tradition of the Church in its integrity, but we cannot keep this treasure for ourselves alone. We must rather aspire to placing it in the hands of the Church, and therefore of the pope, as soon as possible."If, after (the two conditions) are fulfilled, the Society waits for the possibility of doctrinal discussions, it is again with the goal of letting the voice of the traditional doctrine resound all the more loudly in the Church. Indeed, the sole purpose of the contact that it occasionally renews with the Roman authorities is to help them to reclaim the Tradition that the Church cannot reject without losing her identity, and not to seek any advantage for itself, or to conclude an impossible purely practical ‘agreement’. The day Tradition is restored to all its rights, the problem of a reconciliation will no longer exist and the Church will be restored to a new youth."
"The condition of doctrinal discussions was added in 2001-2002 to the two other conditions decreed by Archbishop Lefebvre, when contact was renewed with Rome. Begun after the realization of the first two conditions in 2007 and 2009, these discussions, that lasted a year, did not come to any agreement. Without any doubt, the conditions necessary for establishing a normal relationship are still far from being fulfilled, and there is still a real danger, it is true, in a canonical agreement without a doctrinal agreement first. But must we wait for a miracle without doing anything to restore a new youth to the Church? And what can we reasonably expect and demand at present as far as a doctrinal agreement goes? The only thing that we can hope for and ask for, it seems, is the freedom to discuss Vatican II.
"Let them stop trying to impose upon us an unconditional acceptance of Vatican II as a condition. Let them admit that this council was and still is “pastoral” and not dogmatic, and that it can therefore legitimately be disputed. By ceasing to impose upon us a complete acceptance of Vatican II, and by granting us this liberty, they would already be making an important step, for they would be implicitly recognizing that our arguments are not worthless. An authority that consents to this would already be an authority that is not hostile to Tradition, and maybe even desirous of reestablishing it in the Church, and that would already be a true conversion for Rome. We are not there yet, and that is why nothing has been done. But if Rome accepted to no longer make of Vatican II a super-dogma, it would already be a great victory of grace, and could allow us to imagine reestablishing a certain canonical connection. When will this day dawn? No one knows, but we await it with confidence."
You can read the entire document at https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/avoiding-false-spirit-resistance-3764. It goes on to discuss the risk of becoming comfortable with the loose connection to Rome and going the way of the SSPX "resistance" and ends with an invocation to Our Lady of Hope. While the "Springtime" predicted by Pope John Paul II remains elusive, it will come in time. The gates of hell can never prevail against Holy Mother Church. I pray for the pope daily.
Thanks for posting the SSPX stand on their current status. I am now of total agreement with avoiding the resistance groups, meaning their politics, I would have no problems if I had to attend one of their masses. I think they will forever be nothing more than splintered factions of the Catholic church. Such a shame some of these are good priests as well. They have become obsessed with minor details, such as the only valid ordinations can be of priests ordained by bishops elevated prior to Vatican II. Ever try to find one now a days? I think there are only 2 left. Not a fan of JP2 so we will put my opinion on the back burner for now. Bottom line is thanks! My total confidence in the SSPX is restored. Just in time for the post synodal fall out.
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