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Letter to the Catholic Herald from Martin Blackshaw, Archdiocese of St Andrew’s & Edinburgh
This letter was published in the Catholic Herald, 2nd May, 2008
Dear Sir,
As a traditional Catholic, not given to extremism, I was astounded and greatly disappointed by the Catholic Herald’s front page headline and editorial comment against The Society of St. Pius X (April 25).
In what can only be regarded as an ill-founded modernist outburst of the “ordinary form”, not normally displayed by this more-moderate publication against traditional Catholicism, I fear that much of the good will engendered by Pope Benedict’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, may have been irretrievably lost.
You ask, for example, in relation to the rigid stance of the SSPX against the “errors” of Vatican II: “Who do the Lefebvrists think they are?”
The answer is a very simple one. We think we are Catholics in a similar situation to that of the 4th Century bishop St. Athanasius, who, together with his little flock of faithful, and despite his false excommunication by Pope Liberius, determined to oppose the Arian heresy adopted by the entire hierarchy and the entire Catholic world of the time.
Truth and Tradition triumphed then as they infallibly will again, for despite us numbering only “one thousandth of the size of the whole Church”, as you put it, we hold fast to the Mass and the faith of all time. Continued...
