You think you were crowded? We had to fit the entire neighborhood in a Monopoly house!
Oooh! Oooh! An 'ouse! We are grand, aren’t we? Oh, no hot buttered scones for me, mater, I’m off to play the grand piano!
We 'ad to live on Short Line Railroad! No, no, not in railroad, on railroad! Every morning at half past six on the dot we’d get run over and crushed by Royal Mail engine en route to Leeds!
Crushed by a train!? Piece of cake! We had to fit the entire country into Schroder’s toy piano! And we had to take turns holding up that stupid head!
So far, there does not appear to be any evidence that religion is involved in any way with this case.
And the matter is being appropriately discussed in the “Evil MFers” thread. Because we do know they’re evil.
Not only were they de facto excommunicated by their act, the Pope has come out swinging:
Anyone who continues to associate themselves with this group is excommunicated, including lay people. That’s around 300,000 people, most of whom appear to be driven by antisemitism.
I’m guessing Opus Dei are taking this as a shot across their bow as well. Do not fuck with this Pope - he knows the Chicago way.
Wondering how long before a certain politically notable recent convert pledges allegiance to this splinter as being the “real Catholics”…
The thought had crossed my mind…
Now do JD Vance!
I doubt the Pope would excommunicate Vance specifically. He’ll let Vance excommunicate himself.
And here I always thought the phrase “More Catholic than the Pope” was just a figure of speech, but apparently these folks think they really are! 
I’m having trouble understanding what the controversy is. Did these people do anything bad, or is the problem simply they’re disobeying the pope?
They are super conservative. They literally want the Catholic Church to be run as it was in Medieval times.
The Society, founded by controversial French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, has always wanted to preserve a kind of medieval mystique in which priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Mass itself are seen as somehow closer to God, and therefore separate from ordinary people.
SSPX has consistently defied the Vatican over multiple policies designed to make the Church more accessible and egalitarian, including establishing ties with other religions, recognising the right to religious freedom, and participating in debates over big social and political questions.
It even objected to the Vatican’s decision to have priests face the congregation when holding Mass, preferring the medieval practice of facing the altar, with their backs to the congregants.
And I didn’t include the part where they insist on only conducting Mass in Latin. Basically, the church was perfect hundreds of years ago and any changes made since then are bad and must be reversed. You can imagine what that would do.
Is this related to the Catholic sect that Mel Gibson and his father founded?
Apart from their issues with Vatican II, there’s a strong antisemitic strain to their views that is openly at odds with the current Pontiff (and the previous one, and JPII. Benedict, on the other hand…)
That’s consistent with the whole “wanting to go back to Medieval times” philosophy they have. Medieval Europe was a really bad time to be Jewish. (Not that any other time is perfect, I’m sure, but it was especially bad.)
It’s related in the sense that the church that Mel Gibson financially supports is an ultra-traditionalist Catholic sect that is not officially affiliated with the Vatican and rejects reforms made since the 1950s. So very similar in philosophy, but a different organization.
Thanks. It never occurred to me that multiple people think the Catholic Church isn’t old fashioned enough.
Yeah, it seems bonkers to me too. But believe it or not, they’ve been trying to be a bit more progressive in the past half century or so.
That’s a misconception many people without close ties to or interest in the Church have about the Catholic Church. It’s a big world-wide Church with a wide spectrum of attitudes and opinions, but in general the official Church sometimes is quite progressive in social, political and scientific matters, while being stubbornly outdated in others (ordination of women, tolerance for LGBTQ communities (although this has gotten better, at least in parts of the world), abortion, birth control etc.)