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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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I agree with that, but I’m more thinking about cultural organs as well. Things like religion, particularly organized religion, the family, education, clubs, etc. are potentially points of resistance. I see this as a weak point of the Benedict option. Unless you’re living in a commune owned by a church and have no cell phones and filtered internet, the chances of keeping your community intact and fairly pure are small. Zoning laws, school testing requirements, nondiscrimination laws, and so on will conspire to force you to conform, and entryism will be tried.

It would work just fine if you have a king who respects (not fears) your group and deigns to let them alone for good. But when the king is eventually replaced that favor may not transfer.

In a Democracy, the incentive to bring such a group into the political structure and override their norms with the preferred default is strong and constant.

The Benedict option worked pretty well for the Amish, the Hasidim and the SSPX, and the Hasidim even know how to use state power to their advantage. It doesn't work very well for normie conservatives trying to live in the world.

the SSPX

Are politically active, hold normal careers in secular employment, use the regular suite of technology, consume normal popular culture(albeit less of it), have social media, and explicitly oppose withdrawing from broader society.

SSPX

Who managed to blow up any remaining goodwill for them and are now excommunicated, meaning they can dwindle into yet another schismatic tiny sect out there competing in the marketplace of religion, just like any American non-denominational ministry where the founder decides he is now a bishop, demands to be addressed as such, and needs all your donations for his private jet.

Well yeah but that's entirely their own fault. The FSSP shows the church would have let them exist and be trads just fine.

The FSSP shows the church would have let them exist and be trads just fine.

Yes, so long as they accepted oversight. They insisted on "eff you" and this is what happens.

The current round isn't technically an 'oversight' fight- the FSSP gets away with everything the SSPX would want to do, in practice.

The SSPX wanted new bishops now, because one of their preexisting bishops has recent health issues and won't be able to take flights soon. The Vatican wanted them to wait until a permanent deal was signed and then discuss the possibility of new bishops- and the permanent deal would have to wait until the SSPX held new elections in 2030, to give their leadership a mandate to negotiate on the wording of the joint doctrinal declaration(the 2018 elections were held in the pope Francis era and elected leadership with a considerably more hardline attitude than the median senior SSPX priest).

Except the FSSP were clever enough to colour inside the lines, and the SSPX were not.

So? They have respectable numbers, and from what I understand, they're growing.

Maybe-ish.

First off, we don't know how many people go to the SSPX. They probably don't either. I would guess that their average Sunday attendance is 350-400K, based on their claim of a priest/people ratio of 1:500(this number sanity checks off of priest assignments to individual chapels very well). 600,000 is almost certainly an overestimate; even the SSPX admits this.

Growing isn't clear. We know that when the tradcath community in a given area is growing, the SSPX is usually part of that growth... but usually slower than regular union chapels. Nobody really disputes that pre-July '26 they were growing, but the sources of that growth are in strong dispute(high fertility vs adults joining). It's not clear whether the growth trend has continued- there's plenty of evidence that it has at least curbed.

One thing that is worth saying is that the SSPX leadership is not the same group as the bishops. Yes, this is weird, but they're led by a priest, not a bishop, elected by the general chapter(also of priests, not bishops). This is probably an intentional move to make their canonical status less clearly schismatic. The SSPX is also poor by tradcath standards; SSPX bishops and senior priests would make significantly more money if they joined a regular diocese. Typically in areas with multiple TLM options, the SSPX one has the lowest average income among the attendees. The SSPX as an institution also faces real financial constraints and regularly has to shelve projects due to funding(the FSSP almost never does this- they will raise the money for things they genuinely need to do. The ICRSS raises the money a bit faster. The diocese would just take on debt).

Well yes, but the Amish and the Hasidism have huge barriers to entry. To be Amish, you have to move to that region, get baptized into the Amish Mennonite Church, and agree to live by these rules. There’s something of a language barrier as well. Hasidism have similar barriers: Yiddish, becoming a Jew, and living by the rules of Hasidic law. In principle, a lot of those things could be mapped onto a Christian commune system. If you create a church owned commune you can require that the person join the church to live there, you can establish rules, you can vet both residents and tech to limit entryism. But short of that, it’s going to be impossible to keep the community Christian long term.

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