SSPX Question-You Ought Not Be In Pictures?

[Tiny]

I guess the question there is, to what extent is that attitude encouraged from the pulpit?  It's one thing for the laity themselves to be nutters, quite another for the priest to instruct or otherwise encourage them in it. 

As far as sticking points go, the FSSP and FSSPX homiletics largely ignore them; save for the odd priest who likes sticky topics.

[AMDG]

I was talking with a good friend yesterday about her SSPX sister-in-law. (My friend is NOT SSPX, although she and her husband prefer the TLM).

My friend claims that her SSPX relatives will NOT pose for family pictures - formal or otherwise - with the rest of their "regular" Catholic family. Note that the rest of the "regular" Catholic family is orthodox, mostly Latin mass attending. The SSPX sister-in-law supposedly has stated that she doesn't want to give the wrong impression that she stands in solidarity with her non-SSPX relatives (which, by the way, includes her own parents, also TLM adherents.)

We were wondering what the basis for this is? The sister-in-law is just nutty? Or is there some basis within SSPX circles for this kind of stance/behavior? In asking this, I'm not being critical of SSPXers, I'm just highly curious (and so is my friend.)

These people are loons. I have gone to SSPX masses all my life and never seen anything remotely close to this wacky.

[Scipio_a]

You know, really to do the lady justice you might just ask her.  As I said there may be some history you're not being let in on, and that your friend may not even know.  Who knows?  People do strange things,  Heck, there are actually people that live in NJ.  I know because I've been there. ;D

[QuisUtDeus]

I guess the question there is, to what extent is that attitude encouraged from the pulpit?  It's one thing for the laity themselves to be nutters, quite another for the priest to instruct or otherwise encourage them in it. 

I have never heard an SSPX priest either condone nor encourage nutty behavior.  However, I have heard a lot of Novus Ordo priests do so.

[lamentabili sane]

Indeed, I know some sedevantist people and I believe this would be extreme even for them. And they are generally much more stringent than the SSPX regarding such matters.

Actually, the sedevacantist seem opposed to this ridiculous and non-Catholic way of viewing the situation today:

Our single goal consists of rolling back the changes of Vatican II, nothing more and nothing less. But many in the traditional movement have added “baggage” to this unique agenda, attaching to it various political, historical, and social worldviews which skew and obscure this central objective. Often by attaching this baggage they thwart the very work which has been accomplished with painstaking effort. For people come to our chapels for a single motive: to oppose the new religion of Vatican II. They do not come, or should not come, in order to be Jew-haters, conspiracy theorists, geocentrists, natural food fanatics, homeopaths, right-wing political activists, or historical revisionists. Many have tried to drag in such things to the traditional movement. I, for one, have striven incessantly in my thirty-four years of the priesthood to keep these things out of the traditional movement, ever conscious of the danger that they posed to my work.

The Catholic Church must never identify itself with anything else than the Catholic Faith and with those practical conclusions which flow necessarily from the Catholic Faith, such as the reign of Christ in society. It must never involve itself in the passing trends of the day, or in particular agendas of particular people, in scientific or historical theories(except to condemn them if they should contradict the Faith), in brief in anything which would compromise its universality. That clergy, and especially a bishop, publicly espouse revisionist theses or conspiracy theories, which give even the common impression of hatred of Jews, of sympathy with the Nazi régime, or give credibility to fringy and outlandish concoctions of anti-government fanatics, does serious harm to the Catholic Church. The clergy must always see themselves as agents of the Catholic Church, since they are seen as this by the general public, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, whenever they say or do anything. The priest, and especially the bishop, must lose his identity in a way, by becoming in a certain sense the very person of the Catholic Church which he represents.

[didishroom]

You know, really to do the lady justice you might just ask her.  As I said there may be some history you're not being let in on, and that your friend may not even know.  Who knows?  People do strange things,  Heck, there are actually people that live in NJ.  I know because I've been there. ;D

  watch it, bub.

[Anastasia]

But you also have to wonder, why does this mentality exist in so many trads? Even if such orders are not explicitly coming from the pulpit it's coming from somewhere. I've just heard too many first hand accounts of some things SSPX priests have said and done to think it's just the parishioners. And this information wasn't handed down through gossip. Some of this stuff was told to me as if it were positive. 

I think it's coming from those trads themselves, from a desire to wall themselves off from society, to be an elite club. Because once they have only the right people in a controlled environment, everything will be perfect, right? Unfortunately, I've heard this theory from several different pulpits, both SSPX and FSSP. Probably because we've had an identity crisis for the last 40 years, all kinds of bizarre subsets of traditional Catholicism come about. The agrarians, the distributists, the various groups out there all stem from the fact that we don't really know what it means to be a traditionalist. So we come up with all sorts of other things to define us. It's very like the phenomenon C.S. Lewis describes in the Screwtape Letters, "Christianity and......" which quickly devolves into  "Christianity and.... Spelling Reform".

[Scipio_a]

watch it, bub.

+1 for defending the land of my forefathers!

[moneil]

Our single goal consists of rolling back the changes of Vatican II, nothing more and nothing less. But many in the traditional movement have added “baggage” to this unique agenda, attaching to it various political, historical, and social worldviews which skew and obscure this central objective. Often by attaching this baggage they thwart the very work which has been accomplished with painstaking effort. For people come to our chapels for a single motive: to oppose the new religion of Vatican II. They do not come, or should not come, in order to be Jew-haters, conspiracy theorists, geocentrists, natural food fanatics, homeopaths, right-wing political activists, or historical revisionists. Many have tried to drag in such things to the traditional movement. I, for one, have striven incessantly in my thirty-four years of the priesthood to keep these things out of the traditional movement, ever conscious of the danger that they posed to my work.

The Catholic Church must never identify itself with anything else than the Catholic Faith and with those practical conclusions which flow necessarily from the Catholic Faith, such as the reign of Christ in society. It must never involve itself in the passing trends of the day, or in particular agendas of particular people, in scientific or historical theories(except to condemn them if they should contradict the Faith), in brief in anything which would compromise its universality. That clergy, and especially a bishop, publicly espouse revisionist theses or conspiracy theories, which give even the common impression of hatred of Jews, of sympathy with the Nazi régime, or give credibility to fringy and outlandish concoctions of anti-government fanatics, does serious harm to the Catholic Church. The clergy must always see themselves as agents of the Catholic Church, since they are seen as this by the general public, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, whenever they say or do anything. The priest, and especially the bishop, must lose his identity in a way, by becoming in a certain sense the very person of the Catholic Church which he represents.

Thank you for posting the quote from Bishop Sanborn.  In fact, his thoughts in the second paragraph are things that ALL (yep, even us wayward Novus Ordo Catholics  ;)) should ponder and appreciate.  One just needs to adjust the examples to cover the fringy left as well as the right, and he's really covered the bases.

[lamentabili sane]

But you also have to wonder, why does this mentality exist in so many trads? Even if such orders are not explicitly coming from the pulpit it's coming from somewhere. I've just heard too many first hand accounts of some things SSPX priests have said and done to think it's just the parishioners. And this information wasn't handed down through gossip. Some of this stuff was told to me as if it were positive. 

I think it's coming from those trads themselves, from a desire to wall themselves off from society, to be an elite club. Because once they have only the right people in a controlled environment, everything will be perfect, right? Unfortunately, I've heard this theory from several different pulpits, both SSPX and FSSP. Probably because we've had an identity crisis for the last 40 years, all kinds of bizarre subsets of traditional Catholicism come about. The agrarians, the distributists, the various groups out there all stem from the fact that we don't really know what it means to be a traditionalist. So we come up with all sorts of other things to define us. It's very like the phenomenon C.S. Lewis describes in the Screwtape Letters, "Christianity and......" which quickly devolves into  "Christianity and.... Spelling Reform".

A "traditionalist" is (or should be) only trying to be a good Catholic. The root problem in society is religious. What is needed is the subjection of all things to Christ the King, starting with ourselves, which means personal sanctification. Discussing these types of things (distributism, usury, etc.), while interesting, has only an intellectual value. In the practical sphere, government, economics and finance are closed to all Christian ideas at the present time and will remain so until the Church reestablishes Herself.

In the practical order, consider this; how will a traditional parish be supported by people who all farm potatoes in their back yards? It takes some wealth to run a parish and a school.