Sickness Imagined
The iniquity of true Popes steadily destroying everything Catholic is so mysterious that in these “Comments” four weeks ago we saw Archbishop Lefebvre considering seriously whether the See of Rome might be vacant. He would never pretend with the liberals that the destruction is not really destruction, but at the same time his sense of the Church was too strong for him ever to adopt the sedevacantist solution, so at least in August of 1976 the problem seemed to him “theologically insoluble.” These “Comments” suggested that there might be another line of solution which people as sane of mind as the Archbishop could hardly imagine. Let us try to imagine it.
To ridicule this solution a hard-bitten sedevacantist once dubbed it “mentevacantism,” but the label will do. It means not the See of Rome being vacant, but the Popes’ minds being vacant, or let us say, their minds having had the sense of reality emptied out of them, their minds being empty of reality. Especially since the Protestant Reformation, men have been steadily more liberating themselves from God. To do this they must liberate their minds from the reality around them, because all reality comes from God and points back to God. Here is the liberal illusion, the ultimate liberation, known otherwise as “mind-rot,” “mental sickness” or “mentevacantism,” because the human mind was designed by God to run on reality and not on fantasy or illusion.
Now from 1517 to 1958 the Catholic Popes resisted and beat back the mind-rot steadily engulfing the rest of the world, on its slow way to its end, but all too many of the Catholic laity, priests, bishops and finally cardinals were being progressively infected with the liberal illusion, coming to be convinced that it would create a brave new Church for the Brave New World. So in the papal Conclave of 1958, even if Cardinal Siri was validly elected, the liberals had the power to force the election of John XXIII upon the Conclave, and then by convalidation upon the Universal Church.
But what is a liberal? He is a dreamer, living not in the real world but in a Wonderland of man’s own fabrication. However, as more and more human minds switch off reality and launch into the dream, so he has less and less chance of realizing what he has done, because more and more the world all around him is being taken over by the Wonderland. This means that in modern times it is easier and easier for a man – and every Pope remains a man – to be objectively in Wonderland and yet subjectively convinced that he is in reality. Here is that mental sickness observed at first hand by an SSPX priest in all four Roman “theologians” taking part in the Rome-SSPX Discussions of 2009–2011 (Note the inverted commas – in Wonderland everything is an unreal imitation of the real, so that without some such sign as the inverted commas, we easily take the imitation for the reality.)
On this reckoning the Conciliar Popes are, at least in part, “sincerely” wrong. What that “sincerity” is internally worth, God alone can judge. But externally it is an objective reality, more and more around us day by day. Then the Conciliar Popes are not wholly conscious villains, because in their sick minds they are serving the true Church by changing the old Church out of all recognition, by Wonderlanding it. Now their subjectively good intentions have objectively paved the way to Hell for the real true Church, but can one not say that these good intentions show that the prayer of Our Lord has prevented their faith from failing completely (cf. Lk.XXII, 32)? Even Paul VI condemned contraception, issued a relatively good “Credo,” wept for the loss of vocations, and spoke of the smoke of Satan entering the Church after Vatican II. Then can one not say that even with Paul VI Our Lord kept his promise to look after Peter?
Kyrie eleison.