Monday, February 02, 2009

A defense

A very good friend of mine pointed out that I should qualify my excitement over the excommunications being lifted, especially in light of the Antisemitism that exists amongst some of the group. So I wrote a short defense to him, which I think would be good to post.
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My excitement stems not from their ultraconservative nature or Bishop Williamson. In fact I find ultraconservativism quite distasteful. My excitement is the same that a brother would have, if his father finally told his crazy extremist brother, after several years, that he could come back. A divided family hurts. And it takes humility for the extremist brother to return, and stay home this time.

Plus not all the schismatic Lefebrites are crazy extremists. At least a few are just misguided souls who really could care less about idiocies like Williamson's statement. And there are numerous examples of God saving or being willing to save a whole group of people just for the sake of one just soul.

A third point is that salvation does not depend upon a view of human history. And I don't believe that there's a mandated excommunication in the Church Law books for an ignorant view of history.

And for the most part there will be no difference in the Church, as we already have an almost identical group inside the church called the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. And I doubt any major concessions can ever be made to the Society of St. Pius X, aside from the recent lifting of excommunication. And the excommunication only ever pertained to those four Bishops due to their ordination without the Pope's consent. The rest of the SSPX have never been explicitly excommunicated, and if anyone was implicitly excommunicated, it was most likely only the priests and not the laity.

For me this is a matter of family mercy. Sometimes you put up with your stupid brother just because he's your stupid brother.

1 comment:

HungD said...

Absolutely, I couldn't have made a better argument. The anti-semitism (or suppoed Anti-semitism) of some of the Society's members is not a representation of the SSPX.

Well put. It's just the obstinancy of the intellectually "enlightened left" that have highlighted this one glaring bishop's positions to discredit the Faith and the Pope.