Thank you! That answers my questions.

As for Confessions, I’ve never come across anyone saying anything about whether confessions their are okay. As I understand the theology, in order to hear confessions, a priest must be given jurisdiction by a bishop. I guess that the SSPX claim an emergency jurisdiction or some such thing. I don’t really know. As, for example, in the case of danger of death, any priest, though he has been suspended or defrocked or whatever, may hear a confession. (I think that’s the case.)

Plus, St. Stephen’s is home to the Pouliot family. If you haven’t been keeping track in the “Remnant” or “Catholic Family News,” a saintly little girl from St. Stephen’s named Bernadette Pouliot died on Christmas Day of 2006. (Her grandfather is the late John Cotter, a traditionalist writer from Canada.) The manner of her death has edified the entire traditionalist community. Indeed, a 101-year-old Baptist woman converted to the Faith (Iosephus should remember this) because of the sterling example that six-year-old Bernadette gave her. Who knows how many times I saw her file past in church — from the web photos I certainly recognize the Pouliot family from past Masses — and now I get to invoke her as a saint! Perhaps she’ll be raised to the altars some day, and I can say that I heard Mass at the same church. I’ve gone to Confession to Fr. Matula, the Polish priest who gave Bernadette Last Rites. Perhaps Bernadette’s cult will become significant enough to force the diocese to buy back St. Stephen’s as a shrine. I know it’s a long shot, but stranger things have happened. After all, at one time, St. Maria Goretti was just “that poor girl from the next town over who got murdered.”

http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-
2007-0228-a_new_song_of_bernadette.htm

Iosephus, why do you say that confessions by SSPX priests are not a “sure thing” as far as validity is concerned? And if that is the case for one sacrament, then why do you attend the Mass at the SSPX chapel?

(I don’t mean this as anti- or pro- aggro, and please don’t take it as accusative; this comes from someone who really doesn’t know a whole lot about the canonical status of the SSPX — but who understands that the Eucharist as celebrated by the SSPX is validly consecrated.)

Thank you!

2. Presumably there is a good choir across the street at the SSPX chapel. If those people would have been going to the parish the diocese gave to the Indult instead of going to the SSPX chapel, then the Indult chapel would have a better choir. But the SSPXers continue to go to their chapel across the street, so St. Stephen’s gets the remnant, with whatever their musical ability is. That is one potential explanation for why the music is not the best at St. Stephen’s.

3. Out of the four priests who serve at St. Stephen’s, I’d say that two of them (including Msgr. Gleba) are native speakers of English. Yes, they are Polish, may know Polish, and may have learned that language at home. But as far as I can discern any noticeable accent in their voice, it seems to be that of second generation Americans in the Northeast. Are the SSPX priests Anglophones? If they had gotten themselves regularized, then Syracuse would have some more English-speaking Tridentine Mass-saying priests.

That is my apology for St. Stephen’s.