Meet the Catholic extremists who could shatter the church

[DonViejo]

The Society of St. Pius X has a past of Fascist sympathy and worse. Pope Francis might welcome it back to the flock

KATIE ENGELHART

Last month, a 100-year-old convicted Nazi war criminal died in Italy and nobody wanted to bury him. Former SS captain Erich Priebke died under house arrest on Oct. 11, and that’s when the trouble started. Priebke had wanted a public funeral and Catholic burial — in contempt of the standard practice of cremating Nazi war criminals and scattering their ashes to the wind, or tucking them out of sight.

But the Diocese of Rome refused to bury him — as did Priebke’s hometown in Germany and the foreign minister of Argentina, where Priebke (who died unrepentant) lived after fleeing his war-riddled continent. Each locale worried that Priebke’s gravesite could become a shrine for roaming Third Reich nostalgics. The corpse was in limbo, until the Society of St. Pius X stepped in.

The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is a fervently traditionalist Catholic sect: a Vatican breakaway with no official Church status, and the cause of much malcontent in Rome. Born in reaction to the Church’s modernizing reforms of the ’60s, the Society soon emerged as a stronghold of the way Catholicism used to be. In the towns and cities where SSPX communities popped up (SSPX claims almost half a million members, hundreds of priests, and a presence on every continent, though the numbers cannot be verified), the group is best known for its practice of the old Tridentine Mass: conducted in Latin, the priest’s back to his congregation, and heavy on the Gregorian chant.

Elsewhere, SSPX is known for other things: like its Holocaust-denying bishop; its anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering (an SSPX leader recently dubbed Jews and Modernists “enemies of the Church”); its rejection of interfaith dialogue; and its insistence that, since the 1960s, the Vatican has taken a turn for the worse. The Anti-Defamation League describes SSPX as “mired in anti-Semitism.” The Southern Poverty Law Center ups the ante, calling “radical traditionalist Catholics” (including, prominently, SSPX members) “the single largest group of hard-core anti-Semites in America.”

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/17/meet_the_catholic_extremists_who_could_shatter_the_church/

[cbayer]

1. He could have had a regular funeral and burial if he had repented, but he didn't.

I hadn't heard of SSPX, but they sound really frightening. Glad the SPLC is following them and sorry the Vatican has been trying to work with them.

Murphy's description sounds particularly frightening. Glad she was able to get out.

It will be interesting to see where the Pope comes down on this.

Thanks for the article.

[meow2u3]

2. I wouldn't call them Catholics

I call SSPX Lefebvrites because they're a schismatic sect excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

[rug]

3. They are spinning further and further out of orbit.

Pope Benedict made reconciling with the society a priority, but Pope Francis has made clear he has little interest in courting the traditionalists.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12213587

[cbayer]

4. Good news. I would love to see Pope Francis remove them from the agenda entirely.

[rug]

5. Disrupting Kristalnacht memorials will do it.

[pinto]

7. +1

[dimbear]

8. Agreed. Benedict made every effort to bring them back into the fold while essentially inviting

dissenters on the left to simply take a walk. Pope Francis so far embodies more or less the opposite of that.

[pinto]

6. The SSPX is a very dangerous sect. They morphed opposition to Vatican II into a revival

of one of the most rigid, authoritarian versions of Catholicism in the modern era. Pope Pious X was and is their role model. He was not a good guy.

John XXIII announced Vatican II three months after his election. His goal in part was to move the church away from that era, make it somewhat more relevant to the times and recognize the common ground many religious faiths share. Including the secular communities. The hierarchy of the church, including the bishops who elected him were shocked. Not what they expected at all.

SSPX saw it as "heresy".