A Roman Catholic Blog Investigating the Traditional Catholic Movement, Both Real and False, and the True Hierarchy of the Universal Church as It Exists Today

14 December, 2007

2008: The Year of Mass Idolatry

If you read the daily Commentaries of Traditio, you will see how that site's operators frequently rail against "presbyters," which are the clergy of the post-Vatican II Church -- they do not have the power to remit sins or consecrate a Host. Traditio frequently draws the distinction between these powerless presbyters and geniune Catholic priests, who have been sent from God by way of the Church.

Any good Traditional Catholic publication should draw this distinction, especially as so many "traditional" Masses today are given by these presbyters. But a fact you will not read about in Traditio is how the Priestly Society of St. Pius X is now engaging in a massive effort to encourage presbyters around the world to join its cause and simulate the Latin Mass before unsuspecting Catholics looking for a genuine Sacrament.

The SSPX has prepared a DVD and printed literature to show these unordained laymen how to simulate the Mass. SSPX head Bernard Fellay recently claimed that a thousand German presbyters in the post-Vatican II church requested these materials, and the SSPX's Richard Williamson has been in Italy and around the world, distributing this material to laymen of the post-Vatican II church.

In the game of fooling Catholics, Fellay is frequently painted as the SSPX's "liberal" to Williamson's "conservative." This has worked for a time, keeping many independent-minded traditional Catholics from rejecting the SSPX outright. But there is no truth in that -- Williamson, through his words and deeds, has engaged in many public heresies, which will be topics for future articles. And it was none other than Williamson himself who was personally responsible for ejecting SSPX priests who dared to say that they did not believe the Vatican II sacraments were valid.

Speaking of the post-Vatican II Conciliar Church in Italy, Richard Williamson recently proclaimed, "the SSPX has had to send out on request 600 DVD’s, soon 700, on how to celebrate the true Mass, nine out of ten of them to priests and seminarians."

There you have it -- the "conservative" "bishop" of the SSPX, Richard Williamson, on how he and his Society have assisted hundreds (now thousands) of laymen around the world to simulate the Mass.

This act can only have two purposes:


  1. Solicit money and time from good and unsuspecting Catholics around the world, and
  2. Expose these unsuspecting Catholics to idolatry while keeping them away from genuine Catholic worship (even if that worship is reduced to staying at home with a missal).


Good Catholics have always been able to avoid the world's idolatry because (1) it never claimed to be Catholic and (2) it is so different from their own true worship: they know that a Protestant or non-Christian religious service is not the Catholic Mass. They also know that the Novus Ordo liturgy is not the Mass. But how can they distinguish genuine worship from idolatry when something that closely resembles the Traditional Latin Mass is offered as the Mass by an unconsecrated layman?

It is a fact that the SSPX, since its inception under Lefebvre, has always taken in these Novus Ordo presbyters without always conditionally re-ordaining them. But this new effort on the part of the SSPX, who now offer these materials free of charge for any Novus Ordo 'priest', is probably the greatest act of coordinated world-wide idolatry since the Second Vatican Council. It is clearly heretical, schismatic and evil -- and so no matter what we might think of the SSPX or its individual members, Canon Law forbids us to approach them for Sacraments or even associate with them.

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