SSPX on Luminous Mysteries

I should, by now, know better than to read anything on the SSPX website. It's pretty much an occasion of sin. Which I suppose it's an actual sin to share the occasion with all of you. But oh well...

I came across this, as one does on the internet, though a series of links (I was originally looking for a picture of a rosary to put on my iPod to go with Biber's Rosary Sonatas.) but once there I had to watch it, rather like a car crash.

It seems that not only does this spixie priest not like the Luminous Mysteries (which I guess considering given that all-that-is-new-is-anathema attitude of that particular schismatic group is hardly surprising) but he claims that the encyclical in which John Paul the Great announced them is a sinister attempt to undermine the very nature of the Rosary, deny the importance of the Blessed Virgin, endorse naturalism, say that all other religions are equal, and probably ban rice pudding as well, though he doesn't seem to have managed to highlight that last point.

But the kicker is this section where he complains about the events that were selected to be the Luminous Mysteries:

All three sets of mysteries are necessary for our Redemption, and it could not have taken place otherwise. It is certainly true that most of the mysteries are in Sacred Scripture. Nevertheless, it is not for this reason that they are included in the Rosary. It is because living Catholic Tradition that passed them down through St. Dominic as the mysteries of our Redemption that need to be meditated on through the Rosary. It is consequently entirely false to call the Rosary " a compendium of the Gospel" (§19), as this Apostolic Letter claims, just as it is not according to Catholic Tradition, and consequently not Catholic, to want to add five mysteries "for the Rosary to become more fully a compendium of the Gospel (Ib.).It is consequently not surprising to note that the proposed mysteries of light are not events in our Redemption. They are simply beautiful episodes from the Gospel and words that are encouraging to us. Consequently, their insertion into the Rosary obscures the reality and the importance of the objective Redemption that the Rosary traditional portrays. Furthermore, the new mysteries are all stories from the Gospels, that Tradition has never linked in any way to the Rosary. To add further to the attack on the truly Marian aspect of the devotion of the Holy Rosary, only one of these mysteries even mentions the presence and role of Our Lady, and then only barely, the marriage feast at Cana. The Blessed Mother is in no way present in the other mysteries. One legitimately wonders what they are doing in the Rosary, if not to surreptitiously turn attention away from Our Lady.

Allow me to list these five "significant", "luminous" "moments" (§21): Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, his self-manifestation at Cana, his proclamation of the Kingdom of God and call to conversion, his Transfiguration and his institution of the Blessed Eucharist. You might legitimately wonder why these of all the episodes in the Gospel, and what it is that these episodes have in common to merit the title of "mysteries of light". It is manifestly not anything to do with Our Lady, or even with the objective Redemption for that matter either.

Now, is it just me, or is he saying here that the institution of the Eucharist is not an "event[s] in our Redemption"?

It's all very well to be indisposed to any sort of change. I'm conservative by temperment myself. But to allow that attachment to the past to become a god unto itself can be seriously destructive. The entire document is an exercise in taking the most uncharitable set of assumptions possible -- but at places, as in asserting that the institution of the Blessed Eucharist is not an part of our Redemption, it strays in what is pretty clearly heresy by any standard.

Perhaps this is hardly surprising in a group which has separated itself from the pope in their alleged enthusiasm for the Church. For, in the language of the Church: Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia.