Saturday, March 25, 2006

Another Wanderer

Maybe I will cancel my subscription to The Wanderer before it runs out. Just got another issue, and we have another week in which we see Paul Likoudis throwing bombs and otherwise doing all he can to keep the SSPX away from the table and outside the church. Two articles this week: Another article where Likoudis quotes extensively from Traditio, the sedevacantist website and others outside the SSPX, and where he edits down what must have been out-of-context soundbites from the Society's US superior to villanize them. Alongside is another article from Msgr. Barreiro which is not necessarily objectionable in itself, but is being used in the Wanderer's campaign against reconciliation.

For months now, there has been talk of reconciliation, and for months now, we've been getting issues of The Wanderer devoid of commentary about the potential fruits of such a reconciliation, and devoid of any positive news about the Society or the workings in Rome either. Sheesh, if I want trad-bashing, I don't need to get a paper sent all the way from St. Paul; I can subscribe to (or just dumpster dive at) the National Catholic Distorter which is published down the street!

Face it, if God wills that there be a reconciliation and that the faithful priests of the FSSP and ICR are swept into an independent apostolic administration along with the SSPX, and all are suddenly able to do their work worldwide without the baggage of 1988 and without hindrance by entrenched modernist Bishops, then The Wanderer, and people like Likoudis, will be irrelevant. New publications, and new sources of information, will draw away a large part of their readership, and what little remains can always get their trad-bashing from the Distorter. Catholics in Rochester, and LA, and Albany, and St. Paul, and Orange County CA, won't be outraged by what's going on in their dioceses and parishes--because there won't be there to see it. The traditionalist momentum that would be gained by a reconciliation would sweep up their readership and divert their attention from the bad news which fills the pages of the Wanderer and direct it towards a positive future.

--Curmudgeon,

PS. I guess I should also say that I wish SSPX officials would be a little more careful about what they say. Using the phrase "errors of Vatican II," even in the context of a larger idea that sounds reasonable and Catholic in and of itself, is a bad idea. If they were to communicate the same message in terms of the "misunderstandings," "naivete," "ambiguities," and even "mistakes" of the majority of the Council Fathers and the outright malfeasance of those few others and their periti, they wouldn't be, in effect, arming those like Likoudis whose goal it is to keep the Society out of the regular structure of the Church.

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