I visited a Pius X church unknowingly a few years back. I had never heard a Latin mass before and was curious. (This was before the Pope allowed the Mass in the Extraordinary Form in the Motu Proprio.) I have to say it was a truly interesting experience. They were very friendly, and invited me to dinner downstairs afterward. They handed me all this literature about how Vatican II was a Protestant conspiracy and all that. We had a very nice chat, but I walked away saying, “Well, that was odd…”

Yes, Archer.  I had a conversation on the bus here in London with someone who explained to me how Pope Paul VI had been kidnapped and probably drugged by Freemasons and made to change the church in all kinds of bad ways at their behest, to weaken it.  Like you I thought the better of challenging it and simply nodded amiably.

One curiosity about the Calgary situation:  how did they get the property?  Did the diocese not know to whom it was selling?  Incidentally that kind of modernist architecture would be anathema to the Levebvrists.

I am sympathetic to the “Trad Catholic” phenomenon. Certainly, I think many Catholic bishops allowed Vatican II to lead to many excesses that I think hindered many people’s faith. But, that whole movement though is very dark in a sense, seeing conspiracies everywhere, kind of living the shadows of modern Catholicism. While I understand the allure, I don’t think I could worship in a church community like that for long without becoming depressed.

2. Terry, I don’t think you were talking to an SSPX person on the bus.  The SSPX may not agree with all the tenets of Vatican II, but the mainstream of its membership is not into conspiracy theories like that.

(On a related note, I have seen certain websites that discuss the kidnapping of Paul VI with photos of him from before and after the event.  While I’m not one to entertain conspiracy theories like that, I do think that based on the photo evidence alone (provided they weren’t doctored), Paul VI did undergo an interesting facial transformation that can’t just be attributed to advancing years.)

1. Archer, while using words like ‘protestant conspiracy’ may trivialize the matter, you cannot deny that a radical change took place.  If I had been alive in that era, just viewing things on the surface, Vatican II did form some kind of catalyst for massive changes that led away from traditional Catholic identity.  After all, compare the current form of the Mass to a standard protestant service like what I grew up with at my grandma’s Lutheran church.

“Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Calgary should not attend St. Dennis Church, nor receive sacraments from any priest who is a member of the Society of Saint Pius X unless in dire emergency or danger of death,” the bishop wrote.

What practical effect does this letter have?