Comments on: Spin

By: Flying Lessons

Flying Lessons — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:58:52 +0000

Hey, is there a section just for latest news

By: crusader88

crusader88 — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:45:30 +0000

“…there are some people who have seized on this as further evidence that Pope Benedict is a Nazi sympathizer/anti-Semite/aspiring world dictator…”

Terribly funny, terribly true!

Bless the SSPX for fighting the good fight all these years.

By: Arturo Vasquez

Arturo Vasquez — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:29:50 +0000

What has fascinated me about all of this is being able to read Richard Williamson’s name in the print of the mainstream media, along with references to my beloved ex-seminary in La Reja, Argentina. (Must be a zoo down there. I hope reporters are having more luck calling down there than I have had. They tend to steal the copper wires of the landlines of the seminary every so often.) Just seems a bit surreal to me. But to veterans of the SSPX scene, Williamson’s views were a timebomb ready to go off at any minute.

By: Bonifacius

Bonifacius — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:11:14 +0000

Plus, ideally, the Church would be the common property of all mankind and all of her affairs would in that sense be internal. Pity the media are usurping a privilege they could so easily gain the proper title to.

By: Bonifacius

Bonifacius — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:32:39 +0000

A superb post! I think it quite revealing that everyone feels entitled to speak on the internal affairs of our Church as opposed to the operations of other religious groups. It may signify the following:

1.) People generally take our religion quite seriously. They are only right to do so.

2.) People feel that they need to justify why they don’t belong to the Catholic Church. Gentiles don’t feel required to justify why they’re not Jews, and non-Moslems don’t feel they need to explain why they’re not Moslems. But people have the sense that the Catholic Church has a claim on them, and they need to shake the claim off.

3.) Despite their protests (and boy do they protest too much), they wish to participate in some sense. They feel drawn to belong, even to the extent of taking a position on our internal affairs.

Note that on TV shows and movies, when they need a really strong *good* religious scene, they almost always choose a Catholic church. When a character in a movie is in trouble and needs to think something through, he goes to a Catholic church. Maybe because people simply don’t go to Protesant churches to think and meditate and pray. Even in the latter case, good art (whether cinema, drama, or literature) naturally requires such a setting exist, and in our culture only Catholics provide it.

I suspect alot of the stupid and misguided comments in the media are to some extent manifestations of the culture’s (or at least the chattering class’s) bad conscience and honest fascination with the Church. And the culture as a whole is right both to have a bad conscience and to be fascinated. If only they found the right channels for the guilt and the desire.

By: James

James — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:49:04 +0000

Clara,
Thanks for this very insightful article. I especially appreciated the following: “On one level its fairly amazing that ordinary people would take such an interest in the affairs of an obscure group of Catholic conservatives which many of them probably had never heard of before now.” This is so true. After all, only people like the readers of this site and others like it are even aware of the existence of groups like the SSPX. Besides, why aren’t these critics of Pope Benedict intelligent enough to see that Williamson’s personal views on the holocaust are totally accidental to the issue of normalizing the status of the SSPX? Below is a link to a scathing editorial on the subject that really hits the bull’s eye: (Scroll down to the actual Editorial) http://tinyurl.com/qufl3

By: Fr. Joseph Hearty, FSSP

Fr. Joseph Hearty, FSSP — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:25:15 +0000

Clara,

Thank you for your good article! Let us continue to pray for the Holy Father and the SSPX.

By: Clara

Clara — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:29:03 +0000

From what I know about Pope John Paul II, I can’t imagine that he would be anything but thrilled to see a thaw in relations between the SSPX and Rome. As you say, Luke, I think he was backed into a corner in 1988. But he was always a much more enthusiastic advocate of carrots than of sticks.

By: Luke J.

Luke J. — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:10:46 +0000

Now that I’ve read into this a bit more, I think I may have an answer for my above question. It seems to me that these guys really excommunicated themselves by doing the act – it was automatic. Therefore, Pope John Paul II did not really have a choice, and so they are more like undermining their own previous acts. Is that a good explanation?

By: Luke J.

Luke J. — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:52:30 +0000

In one of the articles I was reading, there was to me an interesting point that I would like your opinion on. The statement was that this move in a way undermined Pope John Paul II and his excommunication. Is that a valid assessment?