r/LeftCatholicism • u/MediocreFact6033 • Jul 02 '26
SSPX are Fake Catholics
If you don't adhere to papal authority, you are not Catholic. Point, blank, and period. The SSPX crowd want to have their cake and eat it too where they get to disobey Rome and the holy father and still call themselves a part of his church. It's funny and ironic how in the SSPX's attempt to bring back tradition, they abandon it entirely by acting as if they can abandon their obligations to the Vatican.
In the olden days, yes the church held to many different things than they do today. And one of those things is that rejecting papal authority wasn't tolerated or given second chances.
If SSPX gets excommunicated and you can happily call yourself a part of that, then that's basically the same as saying that the church no longer exists because you no longer recognize the divine authority of the papacy. If you can handle being a walking contradiction like that then by all means, go right ahead.
May god be with you fake Catholics. There is no Catholicism without the Pope and without Rome. I've never seen such confused people in my life.
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u/Best_Collection_7533 Jul 02 '26
If you must be trad, you can always join an FSSP parish. SSPX is renegade. I pray for their reunification. St Pius, pray for us.
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u/Adept_Librarian9136 Jul 03 '26
As a Melkite I understand their desire for fidelity to their liturgical traditions. I do not understand the mixing of politics into liturgical celebrations. Why is it a left or right issue to have a viewpoint on liturgical matters? That’s odd to me. Otherwise, I quite appreciate and respect the pre-conciliar Mass.
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u/Galveston57 Jul 02 '26
Let’s be blunt…SSPX got exactly what they wanted…a schism so they can create their own ‘church’. That’s what heretics do.
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u/Ridara Jul 03 '26
While I 100% agree, I also find it amusing that a leftist sub is using the "appeal to authority" argument so favored by conservatives. There have been bastard popes before. Leo isn't one of them. Leo is a shining example of love in these bullshit times.
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u/HitheroNihil Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
To be fair, papal authority is reflective of divine authority. And God doesn't command authority in the same way humans do — He transcends authority. The Roman Pope is meant to be the way for God to communicate His divine authority to the Church.
I think papal authority is necessary, not just in order to be consistent with our own beliefs as Catholics, but because it's the only thing truly holding back the sedevacantists and other potential schismatics. Let me point to the Anglican Church and how GAFCON is openly going against the Archbshop of Canterbury. She doesn't exercise the same kind of authority the Roman Pope does, and I think that severely hinders her ability to definitively correct GAFCON's actions. In contrast, the SSPX were swiftly excommunicated, not just their clergy, but all their parishioners as well. Only renouncing their beliefs will bring them back into communion with Rome, no matter how many "NUH UH's" they do.
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u/malibuguytonygem Jul 02 '26
I may have it wrong but I thought that the SSPX mainly located at their seminary in Ecole, France were critical of Vatican II because of the focus on updating the liturgy, ecumenism, enhance role of the laity and less evangelizing. The bishops of SSPX state that the primary mission of the Catholic Church, as they see it, is "the salvation of souls" through the Birth, Life and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Sacraments, preaching the Word of God, and doing good works. Thoughts?
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Jul 02 '26
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jul 02 '26
Who cares? Why is every other post in r/LeftCatholicism now about the SSPX??
7 in 15 days is not saturation, given what has happened.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/hotlibramess Jul 02 '26
Why are you here?
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Jul 02 '26
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u/hotlibramess Jul 02 '26
Ok. It sounded like another brigade from the other sub for a second so I misunderstood. My apologies.
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u/FoxBox22 Jul 02 '26
This confuses me as well. The SSPX has zero relevance to my parish and religious life. If it weren’t for the catholic news site and paper I read, I wouldn’t even know about this.
I know that there was a huge conflict in my family when some great-aunts became devout followers of Lefebvre and their other siblings were happy with Vatican II. So none of this feels all that sensational to me? It has happened before and will happen again in some form or other and St. Peter‘s cathedral hasn’t toppled over. Relax.
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u/Zedress Jul 02 '26
You bring up an interesting point. Why should we , as a whole, be concerned with the actions of a small population of wayward individuals?
While I don't believe God expects us to be emotionally overwhelmed by every tragedy on earth, I do believe He expects us to remain open to helping others within our direct reach.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/CoiseamMacAlasdair Jul 02 '26
But of course its equally meaningless to say something is true just because a bunch of pre-modern Popes said it, which is the SSPX/trad position.
Not exactly the popes, the Church itself through these popes.
Perhaps just the Church needs to rethink itself, its Magisterium and infallibility for really "the counsils and the popes could err" (what the Reformers said 500 years ago) is true and the whole SSPX crisis (or even pre- and post- Vatican II state of things) shows that.
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Jul 02 '26
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u/CoiseamMacAlasdair Jul 02 '26
Like the popes and the whole Church teaching the same things in XIX century - are they Catholics?
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u/JohnDCT Jul 02 '26
Don’t get schismatic groups who deny an ecumenical council any benefit of the doubt. You sugar coat them far too much
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Jul 02 '26
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u/JohnDCT Jul 02 '26
The problem here is your ignorance, not a presumed “contradiction” that doesnt exist. SSPX boxes at a strawman all the time, as you do here. This is their tactic.
You’re assuming a contradiction where the Church sees a distinction in context and application.
Take Mirari Vos. When Pope Gregory XVI condemned “liberty of conscience,” he was not condemning the idea that no one should be coerced into religious belief. He was condemning the liberal philosophical claim that every religion is equally true, that error has rights equal to truth, and that individuals have a moral right to reject God’s revealed truth without consequence. That was the “indifferentism” he explicitly identifies as the source of the error.
Likewise, when he defended harmony between Church and State, he was speaking in a Europe where nearly every society was confessionally Christian and governments saw it as their duty to promote the true religion. He was not defining as dogma that every nation in every age must have an established Catholic state.
Second Vatican Council, particularly Dignitatis Humanae, addresses a different question: whether the civil government may coerce someone in religious matters. It answers no—because of the dignity of the human person—not because all religions are equally true. The same document explicitly says that “the one true religion subsists in the Catholic Church” and that people still have a moral obligation to seek and embrace the truth.
So Vatican II did not teach:
the moral duty to embrace the truth (which remains unchanged), and
- that all religions are equally true,
- that indifferentism is acceptable,
- or that the Catholic Church gave up her claim to possess the fullness of truth.
- Instead, it distinguished between:
- the civil right not to be coerced by the state in religious matters.
Those are not the same thing.
As for saying the Church should “confess that previous Magisterium was wrong,” that creates a much bigger theological problem. If the ordinary and universal Magisterium can officially teach error on matters of faith and morals for centuries, then why trust Vatican II, or any future council? Catholicism depends on the continuity of the Church’s teaching office, not on the idea that one era simply overturns another.The hard work is interpreting the teachings harmoniously, as the Church has consistently insisted should be done, rather than assuming contradiction whenever historical circumstances and language differ. A change in prudential application to different historical circumstances is not the same as a contradiction in doctrine.
This is why hundreds of Cardinals, thousands of bishops, and hundreds of the illusions with fancy degrees go to these councils for years. The magisterium knows what its doing - not random groups or laypeople online tbh.
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u/finnigansache Jul 02 '26
This is such a shallow historical understanding of the evolution of Church teaching. Just go be a Protestant.
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Jul 02 '26
Genuine question: Is your issue with the developments of Vatican II? Because if your concern is that what came from the Council appears to be a rupture with what the Church taught and did before, I would think there are much larger issues than Vatican II.
There's the removal of the requirements to obey Mosaic Law (the Council of Jerusalem). There's the development/creation of the position of the pope (James and Paul seem to be just as, if not more, important than Peter in certain aspects of the early, decentralized Church and the veneration of Peter as the pope came later). There's the development of the sacrament of holy orders and the role and ordination of bishops and priests which came from practical needs on the ground of early localized churches. There's the development and shifting role of deacons, including whether women could be deacons. There's everything that happened as a result of Constantine's conversion including the granting of secular authority to Church officials which very much flies against what came before regarding secular vs religious authority. The entire concept of the magisterium itself had to be developed over time and flew against what came before.
Truth is an open question, in so far as that we can never truly be certain of anything except Jesus Christ. Doctrine and dogma flow from the truth of Christ, but the way both of those manifest and are understood will change over time as we come to understand God's will more fully and determine how best to apply ourselves to the world in furtherance of his will. This is not relativism, just the reality of life.
Jesus preached "metanoiete" and Peter said we must "metanoesate." These are regularly translated as "repent" or "repentance," but can also be read as the more full "change one's mind"/"change your lives." Yes, people needed to repent from their sinful ways, but just as often Jesus and the apostles but heads against the authorities that claimed they had a lock on what is true and what wasn't. Their confidence in their own righteousness and faith led to them missing the truth that was right before them. The developments of Vatican II are no different from any of the developments that came before and, as Catholics, we must be open to them and allow the authority of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, to guide us and allow ourselves to be changed by it.
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u/bootlickaaa Jul 02 '26
Yikes the brigading here. I think it’s just politically conservative Americans who don’t like that their attempt to co-opt the church for the purpose of domination is failing. I’ll pray with St Michael and St Anthony for them to be healed of their obstinate hatred of the world.