Rome and the SSPX - Version 2026 Part 6b: Principles and Rules for Surviving this Crisis of the Catholic Church (Principle 1)

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JMJ

Principle 1: Realize that something is amiss in the Catholic Church

The world in which I had my Traditional Awakening, is one in which practically anything pre-Conciliar such as liturgy, doctrinc, and even dogmas are either suppressed, ignored or re-framed to be acceptable to the ‘world’.

What is more, the people adhering to these pre-conciliar teachings and liturgy are persecuted by other members of the Catholic Church. The things that non-Trads say about Trads can be quite extreme. For example, accusations against Traditionalists include that they are:

• A revival of the Jansenists (link),

• Schismatics,

• Heretics,

• Uncharitable,

• Lefebrists

• Radicals

• Integrists

When one group of Catholics is persecuted by the others for simply wanting to live as Catholics before them did for generations … well something is wrong.

Further, we need to realize that when what was previously condemned is now promoted and what was previously promoted as the truth is suppressed someone is trying rewrite the Teachings of the Catholic Church.

Some elements include:

• Attacks on titles of Our Lady i.e. Co-Redemptrix

  • Vatican: Doctrinal Note on Some Marian Titles Regarding Mary’s Cooperation in the Work of Salvation

  • A Defense and Illustration of Co-Redemption

  • Our Lady Co-Redemptrix

  • The Second Eve: Mary's Part in the Redemption

  • Co-Redemptrix and Pope Pius XII - I

• Attempts to rewrite the Our Father

• Suppression of the Filioque in Canada by the Ukrainian Bishops:

  • The Filioque: A Church Dividing Issue? (USCCB link)

  • SSPX Power Leo XIV and the Creed (link)

  • Pastoral Letter of the Ukrainian Catholic Hierarhcy in Canada to the Clergy, Religious, Monastics and Faither – On the Creed and the Filioque (link)

    • Recitation of the Creed in its Original Form: Prompted by the Second Vatican Council, and as part of a comprehensive liturgical renewal in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada have determined that the Creed once again be recited in its original form, that is, without the words “and the Son.”

• Heresy and Immorality is tolerated beyond the bounds of Charity both inside and outside the Catholic Church.

• Amoris Laetitia: SSPX - Amoris Laetitia: Critical Analysis (link)

• Fiducia Supplicans: SSPX – Fiducia Supplican Search (link)

• Ambiguities of V2: What Is the Position of the SSPX on Vatican II? (link)

So it is fairly safe to say that the Catholic Church is in Doctrinal and dare I say disciplinary turmoil as The Chinese can consecrate bishops with impunity and the SSPX is ‘excommunicated’ for the same action.

Really, you can’t even make this stuff up.

While this situation has been at the forefront since the end of the Second Vatican Council when the hordes were released to white-wash everything pre-conciliar from the memory of the Faither is this a crisis or something else???

What is a crisis?

I have my own ideas about how to define ‘crisis’, but decided to do a little research and came up with the a paper: What constitutes an organizational crisis? A scoping review and a conceptual model of crises as stakeholder perceptions (CASPER Model).

Here’s a summary from their ‘Discussion’ section:

Our analysis identified five constitutive elements that together define an organizational crisis.

• First, temporal boundedness: crises are distinct episodes in the life of an organization, with a beginning and an end, which differentiates them from ongoing dysfunctions or chronic problems (Falkheimer and Heide, 2006, Kersten, 2005).

• Second, the entity impacted: crises are embedded in organizations as structured collectives, making “organizational crisis” the most inclusive term for crises in this context (Fink, 2002, Grunig et al., 1992).

• Third, their perceptual nature: crises are socially constructed phenomena, as they exist only when relevant stakeholders interpret events as threatening (Benoit, 1997, Seeger et al., 1998). Crucially, such interpretations become a crisis only when they are shared by a critical mass of influential stakeholders, following a logic similar to the establishment of organizational norms or stigmas (Boin and Christensen, 2008, Devers et al., 2009).

• Fourth, significance: crises involve risks and stakes that exceed ordinary organizational challenges, thereby demanding urgent attention and response.

• Fifth, the potential for negative outcomes: crises carry the possibility of severe consequences for organizations, stakeholders, and sometimes the wider socio-environment (Abatecola, 2012, Shrivastava, 1993).

• Importantly, these consequences are potential rather than certain, which makes the risk itself a defining feature.

  • Based on these core features, organizational crises can be defined as:

    • episodes within an organization’s lifespan,

    • that are perceived as threatening by a critical mass of relevant stakeholders,

    • due to their significant risk of severe consequences.

So is the Catholic Church in Crisis???

To answer this question we need some context about what was happening before and what has been happening since the Second Vatican Council?

I think that looking back we can find that the present situation has its roots in the scruples of Martin Luther.

This condition of morbidity finally developed into formal scrupulosity. Infractions of the rules, breaches of discipline, distorted ascetic practices followed in quick succession and with increasing gravity; these, followed by spasmodic convulsive reactions, made life an agony. The solemn obligation of reciting the daily Office, an obligation binding under the penalty of mortal sin, was neglected to allow more ample time for study, with the result that the Breviary was abandoned for weeks. Then in paroxysmal remorse Luther would lock himself into his cell and by one retroactive act make amends for all he neglected; he would abstain from all food and drink, torture himself by harrowing mortifications, to an extent that not only made him the victim of insomnia for five weeks at one time, but threatened to drive him into insanity. The prescribed and regulated ascetical exercises were arbitrarily set aside. Disregarding the monastic regulations and the counsels of his confessor, he devised his own, which naturally gave him the character of singularity in his community. Like every victim of scrupulosity, he saw nothing in himself but wickedness and corruption. God was the minister of wrath and vengeance. His sorrow for sin was devoid of humble charity and childlike confidence in the pardoning mercy of God and Jesus Christ. (Catholic Encyclopedia: Martin Luther - Link)

In Martin Luther’s scruples and perception of God as a ‘minister of wrath and vengeance’, we find what I perceive as the rigourism of the early 1900’s leading up to the Second Vatican Council and just like Martin Luther – they (leaders of the Catholic Church) threw everything pre-council out. So, what we are experiencing post-V2 is the Protestant Revolution in the Catholic Church.

Looking at evolution of Liberalism into Modernism we see the Catholic Church fighting it, but at the same time when faced with such external forces there is a risk of becoming what you fight. In the 100 year fight, the Catholic Priesthood was transformed. It seems that it became more of a military than a religious vocation. All that was needed was the stamina and intelligence to succeed as a priest.

I wonder if Charity waned in those years and the execution of the Catholic Faith was hollowed out, becoming the Church of Luther’s hated, imagination. One that he sought to destroy or perhaps the Devil seeks to destroy through the works of Luther.

Of course there were exceptions to this, Archbishop Sheen and other notable examples abound. They however were not enough to keep the Church on an even keel in the storm that was battering at the walls of the Church. As we know that a Catholic who does not have a strong spiritual life to support their practice of virtue will reach their own crisis point. Look at Steve Skojec for the latest example of celebrity Catholics who fall by the wayside.

So … yes, I think that the Catholic Church was already experiencing a spiritual crisis before the Second Vatican Council and that the patients took over the insane asylum. Then once the Bastions of the Faith were razed to the ground, the religious abandoned the Faith in droves.

Now here we have arrived at the Post-Council years. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church continues to try to make the Second Vatican Council work in a way that will satisfy the World (Ecumenism), the Flesh (Married Priests) and the Devil (Hell is empty). Anything that reminds them of their imagined Pre-Conciliar world creates an immediate and vicious reaction. I’ve seen it both in the response to even the slight attempts by Benedict XVI to correct issues in the Novus Ordo Missae. I’ve heard it in the words of Bishops who want to do anything they can to suppress the Liturgy that they “neither need nor want”.

Everything that followed the Council was a result of what came before and those who actually implemented the Second Vatican Council’s dictates on forming religious have reaped the benefits. I am NOT talking about the vast majority of the Seminaries and Convents throughout the Catholic World. I am talking about how the SSPX and as a result many of the other congregations that sprang from the 1988 consecrations (FSSP to name one …). Any Catholic Organization that sought to follow its rule, live in community, grew – just like the SSPX, FSSP, Diocese of Lincoln Nebraska.

Everything else is a wasteland – where a diocese used to ordain dozens of priests every year – they now rejoice at one or two. In the west priestly ordinations in the non-Traditional congregations continue to reach new lows.

Returning to the criteria for a crisis:

1. Since the Vatican Council the Catholic Church has experienced a marked decline in religious life.

2. Stakeholders who care about the salvation of souls have realized this is a crisis – a long one only because no one has yet to have the stamina to appy the results of Benedict XVI’s experiment of Tradition to the rest of the Church.

3. The drought of priestly ordinations has an immense long-term effect on the Catholic Church, one that Married Priests (who can’t be bishops) and Catholic Priestesses will never solve.

So yes, the Catholic Church is in the midst of a crisis of enormous proportions. Proportions so large that most can’t see it for what it is – a crisis of faith – one in which the Chruch by and large doubts as St. Peter.

P^3