Church Militant Still Gunning for the FSSPX

Dr. John Lamont appears to be one of those few Latin traditionalists who are willing to question whether everything should be continued or passed on as tradition. SSPX and Infiltration of Sex Abusers:

The editor of a respected French Catholic journal told me once that Abp. Lefebvre made the mistake of choosing quantity over quality when he set up the Society. This is true, but itself requires explanation.

The starting point for this explanation is that Abp. Lefebvre never seems to have done a postmortem on the preconciliar Church. He did not identify the weaknesses that caused it to collapse so quickly and thoroughly. He seems just to have thought that the preconciliar systems of training and theology were good ones that had been wrongly abandoned because of weakness, folly or treachery among the ecclesiastical leadership, and that what was needed was for them to be restored. Indeed he thought that they would be restored within a reasonable timeframe and that the postconciliar changes and problems would not be a lasting condition.

He also seems to have overestimated the number of Catholics who thought as he did on religious subjects out of mature understanding and conviction and to have been willing to take at face value the men who came asking to join his Society. It is as if he considered such men to be like seminarians in the 1920s, when the population of Catholics who were committed to the systems and beliefs of the preconciliar Church were much larger, the opportunities and status on offer for seminarians of this sort were far greater and the backing of ecclesiastical authority for these systems and beliefs was solid.

He did not see that in his own totally different situation, the motivations and character of the men who came forward to join his enterprise would have to be radically different from those of the seminarians of the 1920s, and that their professions of faith and commitment would often spring from motives and personality traits that did not appear on the surface and that were less than ideal.

Nor did he take into account the implications of the fact that the preconciliar system of priestly training was built on the inculcation of blind obedience and conformity. It is one thing to have such a system for training leaders in an important, powerful organization that is a dominant force in many countries. In that sort of situation, you can still attract serious, capable people who are willing to put up with the training and will survive it somewhat intact. There is also a corrective to the effects of this training, resulting from the fact that the senior leaders eventually have to discharge important responsibilities.

The pressure of these responsibilities does at some point select for men with character and initiative. The situation of a small, marginalized, despised community where leaders are trained and selected for blind obedience and conformity is very different. Sociologically, this kind of community has the characteristics of a cult. In consequence, the men who come forward as seminarians for a Catholic community of this kind will often be ones who want to be leaders in a cult. Richard Williamson, whom Lefebvre ordained as a bishop, is a clear example of this phenomenon, but there will have been many others.

There were problems with the institutional practices and culture within the patriarchate of Rome. What Latin can deny this?

And then there is this article: SSPX and Fascism by James Baresel