heresy

Doctrine Underestimated

Doctrine Underestimated on September 25, 2010

In a generally thoughtful magazine from the USA, “Culture Wars,” the Editor recently took me personally to task, together with the Society of St Pius X as a whole, for wilfully cutting ourselves off from the mainstream Catholic Church. Let me present as briefly and as fairly as possible E. Michael Jones’ argument, with its main steps lettered to facilitate the answer:—

His main point is that the problem of Vatican II is not doctrinal: “(A) The Council documents are not themselves responsible for any of the craziness following the Council in the name of its “spirit.” As for the documents themselves, they are sometimes ambiguous, but (B) God is always with His Church, which is why (C) only something Catholic can gain the assent of the world’s assembled bishops, as happened at Vatican II. (D) Therefore it can and must suffice to interpret the ambiguities in the light of Tradition, as Archbishop Lefebvre himself once proposed to do.

“Therefore (E) Vatican II is Traditional, and any problem between Rome and the SSPX cannot be doctrinal. (F) Therefore the SSPX’s real problem is that it refuses communion out of a fear of contamination, (G) proceeding from its schismatic lack of charity. (H) The ensuing guilt they cover up by pretending that the Church is in an unprecedented emergency, brought on by the anti-doctrine of Vatican II. (I) Therefore the SSPX is saying that the Church has failed in its mission, and that the SSPX is the Church. Nonsense! SSPX bishops, sign over to Rome!”

REPLY: the problem of Vatican II is ESSENTIALLY doctrinal. (A) Alas, the Vatican II documents are indeed responsible for the “spirit” of Vatican II and its crazy aftermath. Their very ambiguity, recognized by E.M.J., let the craziness loose. (B) God is indeed with His Church, but He leaves His churchmen free to choose to do it great, but never fatal, damage (cf.Lk. XVIII, 8). (C) Thus the mass of Catholic bishops He let fall in the appalling Arian crisis of the fourth century. What happened once is happening again, only worse. (D) At an early stage in the post-Conciliar fight for Tradition, it may have been reasonable to appeal for Vatican II to be interpreted in the light of Tradition, but that stage is long past. The ambiguity’s bitter fruits have long since proved that the subtly poisoned Conciliar documents cannot be salvaged.

Thus (E) the Council is not Traditional, and the Rome-SSPX clash is ESSENTIALLY doctrinal, so (F) there is good reason to fear contamination, because of Vatican II’s false doctrine – it is leading souls to Hell. (G) Nor is there a schismatic mentality amongst (non-sedevacantist) Traditionalists, even though (H) the Church is in the thick of the worst emergency of her entire history. (I) But just as in the Arian crisis the few bishops who kept the Faith proved that the Church had not absolutely failed, so today the SSPX belongs to the Church and is keeping the Faith, without remotely pretending to replace, or to be on its own, the Church.

Michael, when, in all Church history, were her assembled bishops deliberately ambiguous? You admit the ambiguity of Vatican II. When did churchmen ever resort to ambiguity unless it was to pave the way for heresy? In Our Lord’s Church, yes is to be yes, and no is to be no (Mt.V, 37).

Kyrie eleison.

Cardinal Smiles

Cardinal Smiles on June 19, 2010

A recent smile of Cardinal Kasper confirms my long-standing belief that despite the profound liberalism of the Conciliar Popes since John XXIII, still one need not doubt their really having been Popes. A number of serious and believing Catholics do doubt it because they cannot see how real Vicars of Christ can depart so far from the Catholic Faith and Church of Christ as these Popes have done. Indeed there is a problem, grave beyond all measure.

These “sedevacantists,” as they are usually called, argue that if anybody walks like a heretic, talks like a heretic and, as Americans say, quacks like a heretic, then he IS a heretic. But a heretic excludes himself from the Church. Therefore these Popes have excluded themselves from the Church and cannot possibly have been its Head – how can a non-member be a head?

The true answer, I believe, is that the heresy which automatically casts out of the one and only Ark of Salvation is so grave that to commit it, somebody must fully know and fully mean what he is doing. He must realize that he is denying Catholic truth that has been defined with God’s own authority by God’s Church, in other words that he is defying God. Without this realization, called “pertinacity” by the Church, he may be denying divine truths, but he is not yet defying God, or casting himself out of the Church.

Now “sedevacantists” find ridiculous the idea that Popes, profoundly educated in Church teaching, do not know what they are doing when they utter such enormities as does Benedict XVI, to take just one example amongst many, on the on-going validity of the Old Covenant. To make a heretic fully realize what he is doing, in olden days, when the Church was in her right mind, the Pope’s Inquisition (or Holy Office) would pull him over, confront him authoritatively with his error, and urge him to renounce it. If he refused, then his pertinacity was clear to all, and the wolf was cast out of the sheepfold. But such a confrontation requires authority, both to summon the heretic and to declare his error. What then if, since Vatican II, it is the highest Church authority which no longer discerns Catholic truth?

Enter Cardinal Kasper. At a press conference he held on May 4 in Paris (already referred to in EC 148), he is reported as saying, correctly, that the Society of St Pius X staunchly opposes the Catholic Church’s dialogue with other Christian churches for which he is responsible. “They’ve attacked me as a heretic,” he said with a smile.

Well might he smile. By what authority, if you please, does the mere SSPX condemn the ecumenical dialogue which has been the Universal Church’s principle and practice ever since Vatican II, which is preached everywhere by Benedict XVI, and for which he is the Pope’s prime agent? Surely it was only charity towards those misguided “Traditionalists” that prevented the good Cardinal from bursting into laughter!

Humanly speaking, the Church is finished. But not divinely.

Kyrie eleison.

Getting Serious

Getting Serious on February 28, 2009

Another good friend will not mind if I quote recent correspondence of ours, because he asked a question which a number of souls may be asking: “What to do now?”

He quoted back to me from a letter of mine to him two years ago: “As for the ability of Catholic Tradition and naturally sensible people to respond adequately to this unprecedented crisis of human nature, I think that if these days are not shortened, everybody will go under. Of course the Catholic Church will survive, but maybe in a rather smaller remnant, by a severe purge of what today goes under the name of ‘Tradition’ .” And I went on to wonder how many good souls in 2007 had a sufficient grasp on the big picture (not just on the mechanics of Tradition) to prevent their being in effect left high and dry, not to say positively undermined, “by the corruption sweeping on, around and beneath them.”

After this quote of mine, my friend then asked, “Where do we go from here? With the horrible effects of the economic implosion reaching down to Main Street and the political upheaval naturally following in its wake, where are we in history and what do men like myself now do? I have not spent my life fighting for the Faith to finish up defending an American Indian-style reservation for Catholics!”

As to the economic disaster, I replied to him a week ago that it is now only starting, and that it means that family fathers like him must look to ensuring the basics of survival for their families. I said it will surely come to hunger and starvation, and I could have added, to blood in the suburbs. The Western peoples and therefore their politicians are so far out of touch with reality that only an appalling Third World War can begin to bring them back to it. War will present itself to such politicians as the only possible way out of the insoluble economic problems. Another 9/11 risks being fabricated to start it.

As for the disaster in the Church and our situation in history, I replied that it means we must pray quietly, steadily and seriously, as though the Lord God is important. With the 313 AD victory of the Roman Emperor Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Catholics switched from fighting lions to fighting heresies, but with Vatican II rotting out both Faith and minds, the official Church gave up fighting heresy, so for Catholics it is back to fighting mindless beasts in the arena. Another Age of Martyrs is upon us. “Today’s Catholic Church,” I concluded, “desperately needs friends of God as serious as are his enemies,” because such seriousness is alone capable of conquering them for Our Lord. Moreover such seriousness “can no longer be proved with mere words, which have been worn bare of meaning, but only with” – and we come back to – “blood.”

Dear friend, pray the family Rosary, plant potatoes in the garden and teach your children about the martyrs of the Early Church, whose testimony reaches way back beyond any native reservations.

Kyrie eleison.