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Stories: Early Days of Tradition Part 5 - Persecution of Fr. Normandin

 + JMJ Following the thread of the internal persecution of Catholics (Bishops, Priests, Monks, Nuns, Brothers) who were repulsed by the 'new way' that swallowed the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, I have one story that I witnessed the end stages when my family started to attend the Tridentine Mass in the early 80's. As I've mentioned before, I didn't want to be there as we walking into the little chapel. It was small, maybe it could hold 80 people.  It smelled, small building imbued with incense - a new experience.  It was strange, very strange. It was a small chapel, a hall purchased by a group of pioneering Traditional Catholics to be their anchor in a Catholic World gone mad. They had started as a rosary group in a layman's basement. Then when Fr. Normandin started travelling across Canada, they rented a room at the convention centre. Those were heady days of First Fervour. When news that Fr. would unexpectedly be in town, the call went out:...
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Rorate-Caeli: They Should Have Done it Under Francis - Plus, full interview with SSPX Superior-General

 + JMJ Rorate-Caeli has published an interview given by Fr. Pagliarani and proposes that the consecrations should have taken place under the Pontificate of Pope Francis. I had thought that Pope Francis would have been the one to do it, just to spite his opponents on both the Conservative and Liberal sides of the Church. Here's my thoughts: The situation didn't become 'serious' until the death of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais and Bishop de Gallerrata (the youngest) had a sudden medical emergency. This presented a real crisis point that I would have seen as signalling the need for new bishops. In the waning years of Pope Francis' pontificate, such a pivotal decision by the weakened Pope may have cast the Church into an even bigger mess (civil war) with people questioning Pope Francis' mental state etc.  This would have created a crisis for the new, and unknown pope, to resolve in the first weeks of his pontificate - without securely establishing himself first.  Not...

Rome and the SSPX - Version 2026 Part 5c - How Did We Get Here??? - Some Thoughts!

 + JMJ So ... let's say that the ChatGPT correctly synthesized the positions of the SSPX vs Vatican as: At the end point, I think the LLM collects an interesting if somewhat skewed perspective: The SSPX mapping hinges on this claim: That Vatican II affirms (at least implicitly) propositions that the Syllabus of Errors explicitly condemned. The broader Church response is: The same propositions are still rejected—but Vatican II is addressing different categories (political, pastoral, anthropological) rather than reversing doctrine. If the "broader Church response" is not a hallucination brought on by the 'flavour' of the texts online ... then why was the preample of 2012 rejected and modifying footnotes that changed the meaning to unconditional acceptance of V2, the magisterium that came after and the Novus Ordo??? Me thinks the LLM protesteth too much! P^3 Doctrinal Preamble presented to Rome by Bishop Fellay 15th April, 2012 We promise to be always faithful to the...

Rome and the SSPX - Version 2026 Part 5b - How Did We Get Here??? ... A Continued Anlaysis using ChatGPT.

 + JMJ Part 5b How Did We Get Here??? So in the previous ChatGPT analysis the LLM ‘concluded’ that there was continuity in doctrine. So now we’re going to explore this element. There is some repetition but I don't have time right now to do a lot of editing.  I think instead we'll have a Part 5c where I try to pull it all together with some old fashioned human sense making. At the end point, I think the LLM collects an interesting if somewhat skewed perspective: The SSPX mapping hinges on this claim: That Vatican II affirms (at least implicitly) propositions that the Syllabus of Errors explicitly condemned. The broader Church response is: The same propositions are still rejected—but Vatican II is addressing different categories (political, pastoral, anthropological) rather than reversing doctrine. While the summary of the SSPX position seems close, that of the broader Church seems to be either an outright AI hallucination or a consensus point from the literature that it used...