Transcript:

On this week’s Vortex, Michael Voris, possibly the most committed critic of the Society of St. X on the Internet today, informs his fans that: 

From the bogus visions of Medjugorje to the schismatic existence of the SSPX to the mad ramblings of dissidents in seminaries and Catholic universities, Rome rarely slaps down anything. And the problem is that as long as something isn't condemned, the followers or adherents of said issue can say, "Well, Rome hasn't said we're condemned, so we are okay.”

Got that? Michael Voris is actually lumping the SSPX in with false (perhaps Satanic) apparitions, heretical seminary professors and apostate Catholic universities. His campaign to undermine his fellow Catholics by referring to them as “schismatics” continues unchecked, in other words, even after the fall of Catholic Ireland and the diabolical decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to enshrine sodomite ‘marriage’ in our own country.

When so much of the world today is in the throes of Godless rebellion against everything good and holy, it’s just really surprising to us that the SSPX should remain CMTV’s big bad wolf.  Honestly, what is going on here?

Conversely, the more mainstream Catholic Herald features an article by Joseph Shaw today that should give our old friend, Mr. Voris, cause to pause. In the course of offering its perhaps overly optimistic commentary on our current Holy Father's attitude visavis the Traditional Latin Mass movement, the Herald does the right thing by the SSPX in categorizing them fairly, in charity and with a constructive manner that will go a long way towards uniting Catholics over an admittedly thorny issue, rather than gratuitously blowing them apart.

Mr. Shaw writes: 

Policy directly attributable to the Holy Father has smiled upon the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), a priestly institute dedicated to the traditional liturgy which was supposedly suppressed in 1975 and has been operating since then without Rome’s oversight.

Formal theological talks to re-establish the SSPX in good standing appeared to end in failure under Benedict XVI, but friendly gestures from the Vatican have continued.

In accordance with Pope Francis’s policy when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the SSPX has just been recognized as a Catholic group by the Argentine state for administrative purposes. SSPX members continue to be allowed to celebrate Masses in the basilicas of important pilgrimage sites such as Lourdes and Lisieux.

Many observers were recently astonished to hear that the SSPX leader, Bishop Bernard Fellay, had been appointed “judge of first instance” in canonical proceedings relating to an SSPX priest by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Bishop Fellay noted later that such practical arrangements have been routine for 10 years. People who have been saying that the SSPX is not just “irregular” but actually “schismatic” have had to swallow hard.

Let us hope and pray that sooner than later, Mr. Voris, Mrs. Niles and the rest of the CMTV crew will swallow hard and stop their counterproductive attempts to polarize good and faithful Catholics who may disagree on strategy, but who are all desperately trying to keep the faith in the midst of the worst crisis the Church has suffered in millennia.

This unfortunate attitude where the SSPX is concerned strikes us as a rather significant part of the problem in the Church today, in that it is needlessly divisive, borderline inflammatory and seems to come up lacking in the basic spirit of Christian charity whose dictates even the Catholic Herald (no friend of the SSPX, by the way) feels obliged to follow when referring to the Society of St. Pius X in the public forum.

Why? Because to continue to insist on the word schism—the mortal sin of schism—where the SSPX is concerned, even after the head of the SSPX is receiving appointments from the Vatican itself—the continue to insist on deriding them as schismatics is objectively speaking a violation of charity.

One doesn’t have to be a supporter of the SSPX to realize this. You can hate the SSPX all day long, but don’t get to slander them. You surely don’t have to support the SSPX to recognize the obvious fact that the SSPX is hardly some fearsome enemy of souls representing a grand spiritual threat to the common good in the Church today, as Mr. Voris, Mrs, Niles, Mr. Carroll and the rest insist.

The Catholic Herald clearly recognizes this, as does the Vatican itself, for that matter, which prompts us to wonder exactly what Mr. Voris is up to. Surely the SSPX doesn't represent some sort of market competition in the mind of the CMTV, right? So what's with all the SSPXophobia over at CMTV?

What are Voris, Catholic Answers and the rest so afraid of? Isn’t it time to stop this. C-mon, girls, you’re all pretty, let’s move on.

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