Being Called To Sspx Vocation?

[Mary Catherine]

I would like to share my experience with SSPX.

 

I had been in contact with them for about 3 years, because it would be hard for me to get an visa to those congregations outside my country, and only SSPX in Asia could help me.

 

But the experience with them has generally been quite unpleasant. In the first place, they try to brainwash me with their strange teachings and ideas, which are far away from the church's teachings. In the meantime, I was asked to abandon all my old Catholics friends, inlcuding those of Novus Ordo and diocesan TLM.

 

And because SSPX only offers a mass here once a month, so they try to prevent me from going weekly diocesan TLMs. The priest asked me why I don't stay at home and pray rosary on Sundys when there is no SSPX mass.

 

It's all because SSPX claims they have the truth, and only their mass is good enough. And all these filled my hearts with scruples, doubts and fears, because I had to miss Sunday obligations, and commit mortal sins, and I was losing all my good Catholic friends. I just couldn't understand what those people in the church has done wrong, so that they should be treated like that?

 

And if you don't believe those strange teachings and harsh requirements, you will never win trust from SSPX priests. I think in the beliefs, people have to "pay" for the truth first, then could they be trusted. This is not a Catholic attitude at all, but a business-like mind.

 

So, over a month before my story with SSPX is ending. Now I am too happy to be back to the church, and choose among all the traditional congregations with the church as far as I could. What a happy and sweet home Rome is! I am no longer being suspected or being tested without end. There is deep peace in my heart, and I found more and more I love the church so much! For the church is the body of Christ, and I don't want to leave Jesus!

[Catherine Therese]

It is fallacious to conclude that SSPX are acting in obedience to the Lord's will because good has come of their work. {So fallacious that the error has a name - "affirming the consequent". c.f. http://www.philosophy-index.com/logic/fallacies/affirming-consequent.php}

But you're just judging it by it's fruits, you say?

It is true that chapter 4 of John's first epistle encourages us to use the fruits of something to ascertain whether it is of good or evil origin, but no Scriptural text can be taken in isolation of the fuller message of the book from which it is taken, much less from the broader message of Scripture taken as a cogent whole.

For starters, John's epistle holds up as the ultimate litmus test of adoption into God's family, and yardstick of one's very love of God, the question of whether or not one obeys His commandments.

Then recall that Our Lord gave the Apostles the power to loose and bind. He established a structure within which service of Him was to work.

Disobedience of legitimate authority is an objectively evil act. It makes no sense to consider that the Lord would call anyone to perform evil.

It is not enough to say that its only a little evil and the fruits are so good. Apart from the startling resemblance that argument bears to a certain incident in a garden a long time ago, its a pretty staggering example of consequentialism. Yet we, as Christians, do NOT believe that the end justifies the means.

Logically, ethically, Scripturally, such a defence of SSPX is deficient.

Furthermore - what Mary Catherine has revealed about SSPX claiming that they alone held the truth, and that only their Mass is good enough... I mean, they're setting themselves up as an almost neo-perfecti present-day gnosticism. If the things I laid out above don't set your sensus fidei alarm bells ringing, this gnostic undertone alone should be reason enough to close off all consideration of orders that do not operate in obedience to the Church instituted by Jesus Christ, and not its schismatic offshoots.

Be on your guard against allowing emotion and sentiment to be mistaken for "God's call".

If you seek to live religious life in accordance with God's will, religious obedience is a crucial ingredient. If the very order to which you belong is founded upon disobedience, how on earth can a vow of obedience have any meaning?

[TIWW]

If one is a Roman Catholic, it is difficult to conceive of why anyone would be called to the SSPX,( who do not find Vatican II valid)  or Anglicans, who do not find the Pope valid because they, along with Henry the VIII, want to divorce, and have the Monarch in England head their church.  Then there are the hundreds of Protestant sects, who have as many beliefs as there are denominations ( create as you go along)

The Catholic church has a lot of problems, primary being the clerical abuse of children, sexual abuses among clergy and other human rights violations, and the hiding of these abuses for years behind bishops and Hierarchy to protect the priests, rather than the children.