A plea for the SSPX to come to some agreement with Rome contains five distinct arguments. They are refuted by the Faith.
An argument often heard in favor of the Society of St. Pius X coming to some kind of agreement with the neo-modernists in Rome runs something like this: “You cannot expect Rome to come back to the true Faith overnight. Down all the history of the Church such returns have taken tens or hundreds of years. Do you want us to wait out our lives before we can be received back into the Church? You seem to like proverbs – how about ‘Half a loaf is better than no bread’? Souls without number are waiting for the Society to move.”
There are in fact several arguments here. Let us take them one by one:—
*What I expect Rome to do or not to do is of no importance. On the contrary the true Faith, complete, is as important as eternal salvation or damnation. The true Faith, because “Without the faith it is impossible to please God” (St. Paul to the Hebrews). Complete, because whoever denies one single Article of the Faith has lost the Faith altogether (Catholic doctrine), and Neo-modernism turns to mush every single Article of the Faith.
*It may have taken a long time for past heresies to be washed out of the Church’s system, but if Catholics faced with the Arian heresy had agreed to Semi-Arianism or even Quarter-Arianism, how would the Church have survived? The Church survived thanks to Catholics like St. Athanasius who insisted on the entire Arian heresy being washed out – see the Athanasian Creed.
*A wait of 30 or 50 years or even longer is of little importance compared with the purity of the Faith. As St. Athanasius famously said, “They have the buildings, we have the Faith.” It is for those who, by the grace of God, have the Faith to “receive back,” so to speak, those who have mushed it (nor does any SSPXer in his right mind presume that the SSPX has any kind of monopoly on that Faith).
*Half a loaf is still bread, and nothing but bread. On the contrary half a truth is necessarily accompanied by poisonous untruth, otherwise it would be nothing but truth.
*If the SSPX were ever to give souls a lead in mixing Catholic truth with error, it would be better if it had gone out of existence first. May it never come to that!
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Agreementitis
An argument often heard in favor of the Society of St. Pius X coming to some kind of agreement with the neo-modernists in Rome runs something like this: “You cannot expect Rome to come back to the true Faith overnight. Down all the history of the Church such returns have taken tens or hundreds of years. Do you want us to wait out our lives before we can be received back into the Church? You seem to like proverbs – how about ‘Half a loaf is better than no bread’? Souls without number are waiting for the Society to move.”
There are in fact several arguments here. Let us take them one by one:—
*What I expect Rome to do or not to do is of no importance. On the contrary the true Faith, complete, is as important as eternal salvation or damnation. The true Faith, because “Without the faith it is impossible to please God” (St. Paul to the Hebrews). Complete, because whoever denies one single Article of the Faith has lost the Faith altogether (Catholic doctrine), and Neo-modernism turns to mush every single Article of the Faith.
*It may have taken a long time for past heresies to be washed out of the Church’s system, but if Catholics faced with the Arian heresy had agreed to Semi-Arianism or even Quarter-Arianism, how would the Church have survived? The Church survived thanks to Catholics like St. Athanasius who insisted on the entire Arian heresy being washed out – see the Athanasian Creed.
*A wait of 30 or 50 years or even longer is of little importance compared with the purity of the Faith. As St. Athanasius famously said, “They have the buildings, we have the Faith.” It is for those who, by the grace of God, have the Faith to “receive back,” so to speak, those who have mushed it (nor does any SSPXer in his right mind presume that the SSPX has any kind of monopoly on that Faith).
*Half a loaf is still bread, and nothing but bread. On the contrary half a truth is necessarily accompanied by poisonous untruth, otherwise it would be nothing but truth.
*If the SSPX were ever to give souls a lead in mixing Catholic truth with error, it would be better if it had gone out of existence first. May it never come to that!
Kyrie eleison.