SSPX Fallout

A woman who lives a stone's throw from us in our little community and who has become a good friend has opted to suddenly move. She came to our area from a different state a few years before us as yet another Covid-era refugee specifically to attend the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) church that is a few minutes from where we live and is visible from our house. She has a wonderfully maintained small Park Model RV (mobile home), a beautiful little fenced yard and vegetable garden, and is happy to live here. But she's leaving.

The latest and most significant rupture between the Vatican and the SSPX a few months ago has been hard on her. She just wants to quietly live her life attending a traditional Latin Mass (TLM) where she feels the reverence is properly given to the liturgy, but she has taken seriously the threat of ex-communication from our bishop (and our pope) to those who continue to attend SSPX churches. She, like my wife and I, feel that the blame for the rupture falls on both sides, but has opted to obey Rome despite the hardship that it is personally costing her. She is still involved in her SSPX church at least in leading a rosary group but has been floating around trying to find a post-Vatican II Sunday Mass more in line with her experience at the SSPX. Not only has this proved fruitless but she has become ostracized in her SSPX community as a turncoat for attending Mass elsewhere.

Before the hammer fell on the SSPX my wife and I had been friendly with this neighbor but didn't know her well. Indeed, she had given us a old Singer foot-pedal sowing machine that I'm looking forward to learning how to use. Due to the fallout we had become increasingly curious and concerned how she has been handling it, so Bobbie reached out and called her. She was very grateful. We had no idea just how challenging this situation was to her and how isolated she was feeling. She had been 'trying out' different local parishes on Sunday and was coming home in tears since the Novos Ordo is as different to the TLM as the English language is to Latin: the one might originate from the other but it's not necessarily obvious. For example, how can the Vatican and local bishops expect TLM-goers who are used to kneeling at a communion rail for the blessed sacrament and receiving on the tongue to just cue up in line and receive communion on the hand from a layman (or perhaps I should say 'layperson')?

My family over the years has been no stranger to the challenges of finding a liturgy that we are comfortable with so completely understand her position. She is moving to find a liturgy which she feels gives the reverence she is accustomed with to Our Savior and is also in union with Rome. She is transitioning to a much more populated area in a state that she previously disavowed so that she can be at peace with the Mass. We know that general area. We tried to move there ourselves as Covid-era refugees. We attended Mass in the church she will attend. It is probably safer than most parishes that are TLM from being closed or overly harassed by the local bishop due to its size and revenue-making ability for the diocese, but despite what Pope Benedict said about not being able to “abrogate” the pre-Vatican II Mass that's exactly what has happened since Pope Francis' papacy and it doesn't seem to be waning. A sense of persecution causes people to become entrenched, and this does not lead to openness and dialogue while TLM people are waiting for the next shoe to drop. So it would seem our friend is leaving her home and (formerly) contented life here in order to try and embrace some solid form moving on shifting sand. It begs the question whether our episcopate is ignorant or callous in their approach to those who attend SSPX churches and we hope and pray the personal costs like that of our friend are not too high.