More Mistaken Notions About the Rome Conferences with the SSPX

Editor: There's a lot more docility on the part of the SSPX to what the Vatican says it wants; but William Oddie says that he's a Papal Loyalist, understandably so for the SSPX has shown time and time again that it has been more loyal to the Holy Father than the men who are supposed to be in union with him. Incredibly, he talks about the mainstream Catholic. Actually, if the numbers on birth control and actual knowledge of the average layman to be believed, most Catholics are not Papal Loyalists. They don't either believe or understand most Catholic doctrine, and they don't practice what the Catholic Church teaches by and large. On the other hand, it's your SSPX types who are on board with the Pope on Birth Control, Homosexuality, the Hierarchy and a host of other issues.

I suppose the Guardian just hopes to portray the Traditionalist position as ridiculous, but William Oddie's expectations and explanations really fly in the face of reality when he writes the following:

Well, I can’t say I’m neutral between the two points of view, definitely tending towards being a “papal loyalist” (despite some discomfort over Assisi, I think it’s just about defensible), though how high-minded you need to be to hold such views I’m not sure: it seems to me it’s a perfectly normal for a mainstream Catholic to be loyal to the pope. [Hmmm...you'd think...]

The real question is whether there was ever any realistic prospect that there might be any kind of rapprochement. Rome’s view is that the SSPX can be as critical as it likes about the distortions of Vatican II – what Pope Benedict calls “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” – but in the end it has to accept the essential Catholicity of the Council itself. This seems to me entirely reasonable. SSPX actually demands that Rome should repudiate the Council and accept that the Mass of Paul VI is invalid, even Protestant.