Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The SSPX And The Anonymous Critics of Pope Francis

After the unfortunate (or rather disgraceful) piece published by the SSPX with the public condemnation of the anonymous critics of the Pope, yours truly has published some old but, I think, valid considerations about the reasons for anonymity. It seems to me that whoever does not get the very simple concepts I have therein explained is being very naive in the best of cases, and very bad in the worst.

Also, please mind that my blog post was not meant as a defense of this little effort. I doubt the SSPX is even aware of my existence. However, the SSPX is certainly aware of the epic, but absolutely justified anti-Francis pranks in the last weeks (the posters and the fake Osservatore page), as well as of the well informed, anonymous, very critical posts published on Rorate Caeli in the past and signed by Don Pio Pace (an example is here. Every respectable search engine will give you others). In the last days we also had more explosive commentary from the excellent, anonymous Fra’ Cristoforo (this, dear readers, is Manzoni again!), who blogs in Italian in the aptly named site Anonimi della Croce.  (“Anonymous Ones of the Cross”). All of them have intervened to target one man: the Evil Clown.

It is utterly amazing that after the Holy Ghost allowed Trump’s great victory in part through anonymous revelations to Assange’s WikiLeaks and even more anonymous hacking of John Podesta’s emails, there should be people who still prefer – when this is at no cost and no risk to them – to accuse of “cowardice” people who are giving an extremely precious service to Christianity. Would the anonymous author of the SSPX article have preferred that the “cowardly”, anonymous WikiLeaks hacker had never penetrated John Podesta’s emails? Words fail me.

Even more persuading is the argument appeared on Non Veni Pacem. : the organisation that justifies her own disobedience to the Pope in the name of the state of necessity is unable to understand, condone, or even not insult the in comparison extremely harmless disobedience of critics of probably the most Satan-friendly Pope in history? Really? Is the anonymous writer of the SSPX article unable to understand that we are living every day in a state of necessity the like of which Archbishop Lefebvre could only imagine in a very hypothetical way? 

But there is more. The SSPX is, many say, about to be “reconciled” with the Vatican. Am I the only one who thinks that such initiatives should be avoided now more carefully than ever, in order to avoid even the suspicion that the SSPX may be trying to ingratiate themselves to Francis?

Not saying that this is the case, of course. But I do think that the SSPX should be above suspicion. I am sorry to say this, but right now they aren’t; at least some corners within them. 

It would be smart to let that disgraceful article disappear. It would be even smarter to let it follow with the most brutal indictment of Amoris Laetitia, in a condemnation even worse than the comparison to the boat with a hole in its bottom. It would be smartest to accuse Francis of being a heretic again, renewing the accusation that he is a genuine Modernist , just in case anyone might be forgetting. Think of the words Bishop Fellay used on that occasion: 

“Any obedience to be true must be related to God. When I say I obey to a person” he should be a “a mirror of God.” But “when mirror tells me contrary of God, it is no longer a mirror, then I don’t follow him.”

Pretty clear, uh? This is the attitude we want to see from the SSPX, not the third-rate politicking at the expense of perfectly decent Catholics. We don’t need this kind of attitude from the SSPX. If they don’t like the anonymity of the pranks and the accusations, they should be decent enough to shut up about it.

Particularly now. 

M