Schism Heal In Progress

GET THE STORY.

UPDATE: Sigh. Zenit has the most annoying and unprofessional habit of keeping a finite number of story pages and the changing the text on those pages, instead of generating a new page for each story. What is wrong with those people! In any event, they’ve now changed the text on the page I linked to something completely different.

Okay, so forget Zenit.

NOW, GET THE STORY.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

14 thoughts on “Schism Heal In Progress”

  1. To say that healing is in progress is a little premature. Everyone is making nice at the moment. When follow-up mettings are scheduled, then “the healing” would be in progress.

  3. I’m curious to know the number of people that belong to the SSPX and the number of priests they have. Anybody have an idea?

  7. I think the link was to a general page and not to a specific article. Same page, different article. I wondered that too, though de Foucauld’s life sounds interesting.

  9. I just went to the SSPX website and look what they had underneath a picture of the Pope:
    “The Society of Saint Pius X professes filial devotion and loyalty to Pope Benedict XVI, the Successor of Saint Peter and the Vicar of Christ.
    The priests of the SSPX pray for the intentions of the Holy Father and the welfare of the local Ordinary at every Mass they celebrate.”
    I guess we are getting closer to reconciliation!

  10. You can link permanently to Zenit stories – but it is a fiddly process. The story you originally linked to is at http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=75644
    The problem is that Zenit uses a frame-based website which makes links difficult. The trick is not to click on the link to the story in question but to find a link to the story on the Zenit main page, right click, copy the link and then paste it into your browser.

  11. (Dang I thought I had that frame thing licked. My firefox didn’t give me frame options in my menu. Strange.)
    Very very interesting post there on the SSPX website. Now if we can only find the same in the Orthodox church websites. I am in a discussion with some folks about purgatory and someone piped up that the Orthodox reject it. I did some research and it appears that there were only two bones of contention: (1) the Orthodox disagree that Purgatory is necessarily about fire; and (2) the Orthodox disagree that Purgatory is a place, simply a state.
    Neither of those two seem to present a problem. I think the fiery metaphor was just that, metaphor, and taken from the epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter. And the catechism does seem to say that Purgatory is a state. Of course, there are other disagreements, e.g., papal infallibility and the filioque clause of the creed. But they already accept papal primacy, and their disagreements with filioque might stem from apprehensions of something that hasn’t happened, that it obfuscates the relationship among the persons of the Trinity.
    Still, there’s reason to hope. And pray even more.

  12. The line about praying for the Pope has been up on the SSPX website as long as I can remember – I’ve read their site for a long time. It’s a shame that people so devoted to the Catholic past and Holy Mass cannot recognize that same Church and Sacrifice in the Church today.
    Jeff – I think the Orthodox objections to Purgatory are based on a more medieval conception of Purgatory, which saw it as a temporary Hell. This is of course not doctrinal, but there you go. The Trent Decree on Purgatory states, in part, “Since the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has, following the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the Fathers, taught in sacred councils and very recently in this ecumenical council that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, the holy council commands the bishops that they strive diligently to the end that the sound doctrine of purgatory, transmitted by the Fathers and sacred councils, be believed and maintained by the faithful of Christ, and be everywhere taught and preached.” I don’t think that this decree contains any insurmountable obstacle to Orthodox belief.

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