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Here are five reasons for this:
  1. They fear to leave the compromise group because they don’t trust God.
  2. They fear to leave the compromise group because of human respect (and fear being condemned or criticized).
  3. They are lonely and will miss their friends (and fear drifting apart from them).
  4. They fear if they leave they will not be able to send their children to that compromise group’s school.
  5. Parents and relatives fear to leave the compromise group when/if a family member joins its seminary or convent.
Below, we discuss each of these excuse-“reasons”.

1. They fear to leave the compromise group because they don’t trust God.

“I need my sacraments. I have to go somewhere for Mass on Sundays.” First of all, God put us in this time in history, in order for us to save our souls. We weren’t born in the tumultuous Arian times or any other. We were born in the present time of great apostasy because God, in His infinite wisdom, knew from all eternity that this present time is the best thing for His glory and our perfection.
In every age of the Church, our Lord has expected His followers to stand up for the truth and avoid all compromise. There are a million subtle ways to go wrong and we must be diligent to avoid the traps of Satan. One serious trap is for a soul to lose trust in God’s Providence, through pride. We may think that this doesn’t apply to us because we are not being “solicitous” about what we will eat, drink or wear.
Our Lord teaches:
I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit?
And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.

St. Matthew’s Gospel, 6:25-33 (emphasis added).
Yet are we willing to put our trust completely in God and stay home on Sunday and sanctify our Sunday by reading our Mass prayers and the Propers from our missals, say the rosary, and make a spiritual communion?
Concerning a good method to sanctify our Sundays without a priest or Mass (as so many Catholics have had to do at different times in the Church), see the article at this link: ../faith/sanctifying-sunday-no-mass.html
In these times of great apostasy, when uncompromising priests are so very rare, God especially protects those priests and faithful who don’t compromise. God always cares for His Church—His flock. Even in His Passion, when His Divinity was very hidden and His apostles ran away, He was still God and took care of His apostles. Our Lord promised that He would take care of His flock: “I will not leave you orphans”. St. John’s Gospel, 14:18. Our Lord even included us in His prayer for His apostles before we were created. St. John’s Gospel, 17:20. A problem we Catholics face especially now, when all morality is crumbling around us in the world and in the human element of the Church, is that we don’t think and ponder enough about Our Lord’s providential care for us and the work that He does in our souls. We forget that there is nothing virtuous we can do without God.
In our pride, we try to direct and sustain our spiritual life without leaning on God. We tell God the conditions we should have to save our souls. We want to lead Providence rather than follow It. Because of this proud attitude, we decide that we know best that we cannot live without the Mass and Sacraments even when that is God’s plan for us.
With false humility, we tell ourselves that we are too weak to be without “our sacraments” so we don’t stand up for the Faith as we should because that would result in losing “our sacraments”. But this is wrong. We should instead stand for the Faith and trust God will bless us through the means He knows best (and in the way which is far better than our puny minds can imagine).
Let us not fear losing “our sacraments”. Let us imitate the trust in God shown by St. Gregory Nazianzen, Doctor of the Church, who feared only sin:
What evil can happen to us after all this? None, certainly, unless we by our own fault lose God and virtue. Let all other things fall out as it shall please God. He is the Master of our life, and knows the reason of everything that befalls us. Let us only fear to do anything unworthy of our piety.
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, May 9th, St. Gregory Nazianzen.

2. They fear to leave the compromise group because of human respect (and fear being condemned or criticized).

Along with our trying to save our souls in our way (rather than God’s way), human respect also creeps in. We fear people will tell lies about us, e.g., say we are sedevacantists.
We fear that they will put the worst interpretation on our motives for leaving. We don’t want people to accuse us of being proud or mock us for “knowing better than the priest”, or condemn us for judging them because we see something wrong and must leave.
In summary, we fear that people will think we are weird or extreme. This amounts to our placing people before God and being more concerned about what they think rather than being concerned only about what God thinks and how to serve Him.
Our Lord answers these fears and assures us these condemnations are a blessing which should make us rejoice. Here are His words:
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.
St. Matthew’s Gospel, 5:11-12.

3. They are lonely and will miss their friends (and fear drifting apart from them).

“I already feel so alone being Traditional Catholic”; “I don’t have any like-minded people to talk with (I need a social outlet)”; “I need to go somewhere on Sunday”; “I feel like the ‘odd man out’”; “I am not called to be a hermit”.
True friendship is based on virtue and it is not really true friendship if one of the “friends” is willing to compromise the Faith (or virtue) in any way.
Man is a social creature. God made man so. God knows we need friendships. God knows that true friendship is based on virtue. God wants us to be straight-to-heaven saints and expects us to desire this too. We shouldn’t want to choose companions that deter us from our goal of heaven. These would be bad companions and would do us more harm than good. God does not want us to seek relationships with people who are not willing to stand up for His truth. He warns us:
He that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. ... He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.
St. Matthew’s Gospel, 10:32-37.
We must desire to be united with Our Lord, even if this results in losing all ties with family and friends. God must always come first with us. Divine Friendship is incomparably more important than human friendship.
Many times, Sacred Scripture shows Christ abandoned by man because of the truth, as the following examples show:
I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none. Psalm 68:21.
Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53:3.
My friends and my neighbors have drawn near and stood against me. And they that were near me stood afar off. Psalm 37:12.
I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother. Psalm 68:9.
I am ... the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people. Psalm 21:7.
Friend and neighbor thou hast put far from me: and my acquaintance, because of misery. Psalm 87:19.
We must unite with Our Lord and He told us:
If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
St. John’s Gospel, 15:20.
We must be willing to imitate Our Lord when He was left alone. If we are forced to be friendless for Our Lord’s sake, then He is calling us to a higher state of perfection and we know this would be for our good.
St. John of the Cross, the Mystical Doctor of the Catholic Church, teaches this truth as follows:
For each temporal joy which the soul renounces for the love of God, and for the perfection of the Gospel, God will give him a hundred joys even in this life.
St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book III, ch. 20.
We must also remember that God is not outdone in generosity. As St. Paul tells us: “I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come”. Romans, 8:18.
When God asks us to sacrifice for Him and out of love for Him, He rewards us sweetly even in this life. He provides moral support when we least expect it and often from sources we did not expect (or from people whom we did not know were like-minded).
As often happens, when we begin discussing the Faith (and other important topics) with someone, this person learns our convictions, and he says “I had no idea you thought like that; I thought I was the only one who thinks that way”; “I thought I was crazy; I asked myself many times whether I was the only one to see the liberalism; I asked myself why no one else thinks this way.”
When we realize someone has the same convictions as we do, we get an immediate consolation. We have found a true Catholic friend and we are grateful to God that He has given us such moral support.
We should take the shining example of St. Basil the Great, Doctor of the Church, who rightly held the Catholic Faith more important than anything else. Thus, he broke off all ties with a man because that man agreed to a creed which contained an important omission: it omitted the word “consubstantial”.
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, June 14th, St. Basil the Great.
In our weakness, how often do we continue with our parish and our fellow parishioners despite their omissions: viz., they omit to stand up and profess the uncompromising, anti-liberal doctrine they should hold and profess. If we think that the N-SSPX and the false “Resistance” are not liberal and compromising and sliding further, then we are not paying attention to what they are saying and doing.
See, e.g., the many proofs of their errors and compromises in their own words, quoted from their own sources, here: ../priests/sspx.html and ../priests/williamson.html
Do we perhaps tell ourselves that we stay at our compromise chapel because we want to “work from within” and help convert people there from their liberalism? This is a classic tool of the devil (i.e., do bad under the appearance of good) which caused so many parishioners to lose their way in the late 1960s and in the1970s.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, Doctor of the Church, warns against this presumptuous excuse in these words:
It is an illusion to seek the company of sinners on pretense to reform or convert them: it is far more to be feared they will communicate their poison to us.
Butler’s Lives of the Saints, June 14th, St. Basil the Great.

4. They fear if they leave they will not be able to send their children to that compromise group’s school.

There are five reasons this is a false excuse which offends God and will harm our families:
  1. “If I leave this (compromise) group, I won’t have a school for my children.” This is the same old excuse which failed so many families in the 1960s. This excuse is the devil’s tactic of introducing compromise under the appearance of good. See, Rule for the Discernment of Spirits #4 for the Second Week . The Blessed Virgin Mary included this rule when she gave St. Ignatius of Loyola the Spiritual Exercises.
  2. Further, failing to break ties with the compromise group because “I have no choice because I need a school for my children” shows a failure to trust God like a good son should trust his good father.
  3. Compromise groups have compromise schools and they will harm our children. We should not fool ourselves that we can know or prevent all of the harm that will come to our children.
  4. Familiarity with a compromise group tends to cause our children to trust them. They are the authority figures we would be giving to our children to learn from. This relationship would make our children especially susceptible to being misled by their teachers and classmates.
  5. Staying with the compromise group to send our children to that school sends the message to our children that the Catholic Faith is not of first importance but that purity of Faith needs to be “weighed” or “balanced” against practical considerations such as a school.

5. Parents and relatives fear to leave the compromise group when/if a family member has joined its seminary or convent.

“We are a family and must be loyal to each other.” “Family comes first.” “What would people think of us if we did not support a family member who had a religious vocation?” “Without our support the seminarian or novice might abandon his (her) vocation.”
But supporting a compromise religious vocation, puts family loyalty before loyalty to God and the traditional Catholic Faith. Showing support for the formation and life of a family member in a compromising group and a compromise Faith displeases God and might be what keeps that relative on the wrong path. A vocation within a compromise group is not a joy. It is a sorrow. It is not a blessing. It is a cross. At our Judgment, God will ask us if we put Him first and showed that relative the “tough love” needed to cause him (her) to leave the compromise group for the sake of the Faith.
What should we do if our family suffers the tragedy of having a relative enter a compromise religious group? If the family member is still only considering entrance into the compromise seminary or convent, we must make clear where we stand. We must tell him that we can never support or approve his compromise vocation in the compromise group!
We must tell this family member that instead of entering the bad group, we will help him research the world to find an acceptable, uncompromising seminary or convent. If his (her) vocation is genuine, God will certainly provide what is needed.
If the family member has already joined the compromise group, then when he visits next, be prepared (with the help of an uncompromising priest) to explain why he should leave his compromise group for the sake of his eternal salvation. These discussions should be discrete enough so that the compromise group does not respond by doubling its liberal brainwashing efforts to prevent the family member from seeing the truth.
Of course, don’t forget to pray hard that this family member comes to see clearly his duty to leave his liberal group and all compromise, for the sake of the Catholic Faith and his soul.
Even if we do not meet with immediate success, we must hold firm! Beware! If we compromise even one time, our family member will harbor hopes that if he continues longer on his (compromise) path, then we will “come around” and compromise again by accepting his status.

Conclusion of this article

Let us do now what at our Judgment we would want to have done! Let us stand up for the Faith and leave the compromise group!