sedevacantism

Vacancy Sense – II

Vacancy Sense – II on May 2, 2015

Concerning the deposition of a heretical Pope, the Traditional Dominicans of Avrillé in France have done us a great favour by publishing not only the classic considerations of John of St Thomas (cf. EC 405), but also those of other outstanding theologians. In brief, the best minds of the Church teach that a simple and popular argument today, namely that a heretical Pope cannot be a member of the Church and therefore all the less its head, is a little too simple. In brief, there is more to the Pope than just the individual Catholic who by falling into heresy loses the faith and with it his membership of the Church. For the Church, the Pope is much more than just an individual Catholic.

For clarity, let us present these theologians’ arguments in the form of question and answer:—

First of all, is it possible for a Pope to fall into heresy?

If he engages all four conditions of his Extraordinary Magisterium, he cannot teach heresy, but that he can personally fall into heresy is the more probable opinion at least of older theologians.

Then if he does fall into heresy, does that not make him cease to be a member of the Church?

As an individual Catholic person, yes, but as Pope, not necessarily, because the Pope is much more than just an individual Catholic. As Augustine said, the priest is Catholic for himself, but he is priest for others. The Pope is Pope for the entire Church.

But supposing that the great majority of Catholics can see that he is a heretic, because it is obvious. Would not his heresy in that case make it impossible for him to be Pope any longer?

No, because even if his heresy were obvious, still many Catholics might deny it, for instance out of “piety” towards the Pope, and therefore to prevent confusion from arising throughout the Church, an official declaration of the Pope’s heresy would be necessary to bind Catholics to stay united. Such a declaration would have to come from a Church Council, assembled for that purpose.

But if the heresy were public and obvious, surely that would be enough to depose him?

No, because firstly every heretic must be officially warned before being deposed, in case he would retract his heresy. And secondly, in Church or State every high official is serving the common good, and for the common good he must stay in office until he is officially deposed. So just as a bishop stays in office until he is deposed by the Pope, so the Pope stays in office until the official declaration of his heresy by a Church Council enables Christ to depose him (cf. EC 405).

But if a heretic is not a member of the Church, how can he be its head, the most important member?

Because his personal membership is a different thing from his official headship. By his personal membership he receives sanctification from the Church. By his official headship he gives official government to the Church. So by falling into heresy, he ceases to be a living member of the Church, that is true, but he does not thereby cease being able, even as a dead member, to govern the Church. His membership of the Church by faith and charity is incompatible with heresy, but his governing of the Church by his official jurisdiction, not requiring faith or charity, is compatible with heresy.

But by his heresy a former Pope has thrown away his Papacy!

Personally and in private that is true, but that is not true officially and in public until a Church Council has made not only public but also official his heresy. Until then the Pope must be treated as Pope, because for the Church’s tranquillity and common good, Christ maintains his jurisdiction.

Kyrie eleison.

Emotional Arguing

Emotional Arguing on March 21, 2015

An old-fashioned comparison has the advantage of being very clear: on the back of a mule a heavy pack can be difficult to balance. If it shifts to the left, one must push it to the right. If it tilts to the right, it must be pushed to the left. But such double pushing is not contrary – it has the single purpose of keeping the pack balanced. Similarly, for these “Comments” to argue repeatedly against sedevacantism is not to push towards liberalism, nor is it to suggest that sedevacantism is as bad as liberalism. It is merely to recognize that the outrageous words and deeds of the present occupant of the Holy See are tempting many good Catholics to renounce their reason and to judge of reality by their emotions. That is a common practice today, but it is not Catholic.

For instance sedevacantist arguments are, upon examination, never as strong as they can seem. Let us look at two that have crossed my desk recently, both from devout Catholics, strong in the Faith. Here is the first: Conciliar Popes, especially Francis, have not confirmed their brethren in the Faith. But it is of the essence of a Pope to do that. Therefore the Conciliar Popes are not essentially Popes. In reply one must distinguish a Pope in his being from a Pope in his action. A Pope becomes essentially Pope in his being by his valid election in a Conclave of Cardinals, or by his election, if it was invalid in itself, being convalidated by his subsequent acceptance as Pope by the Universal Church (which may have been the case for more than one Conciliar Pope, God knows). On the contrary, by confirming his brethren in the Faith a Pope is essentially Pope in his action. The two things are different and can be separated. Therefore a Pope can fail in action without necessarily ceasing to be a Pope in his being. That is surely the case of several, if not all, the Conciliar Popes.

And here is the second argument: for the individual and fallible Catholic to set himself up as judge of error by the Church’s infallible Magisterium is ridiculous. Faced then by obvious error (e.g. Conciliarism) by that Magisterium (e.g. the Conciliar Popes), he can only conclude that they have not been true Popes. But, in reply, the Pope is not necessarily the Church’s infallible Magisterium. If he neither engages all four strict conditions of the Extraordinary Magisterium, nor teaches in accordance with the Church’s Ordinary Magisterium, then he is fallible, and if he contradicts that Ordinary Magisterium then he is certainly in error, and can be judged to be such by any Catholic (or non-Catholic!) making the right use of his God-given mind. Otherwise how could Our Lord have warned us to beware of false prophets and of wolves in sheeps’ clothing (Mt. VII, 15–20)?

In fact both arguments can come from an emotional rejection of the Conciliar Popes: “They have so maltreated the Church that I simply cannot accept that they were Popes!” But what if I had been a bystander watching the original Way of the Cross? – “This is such maltreatment of Jesus that I simply cannot accept any longer that he is the Son of God!” Would not my emotional rejection of the maltreatment have been right, and yet my conclusion wrong? There is a mystery involved in the Conciliar Popes which sedevacantism passes by.

Now it may be, when the Church one day comes back to her senses, that the alone competent authority will declare that the Conciliar Popes were not Popes, but between now and then the arguments so far brought forward to prove the See of Rome to be vacant are not as conclusive as they can be made to appear.

Kyrie eleison.

Sickness Unimaginable

Sickness Unimaginable on March 7, 2015

In the Society of St Pius X’s “hot summer” of 1976, after Paul VI “suspended” Archbishop Lefebvre for ordaining 14 priests for Tradition, the clash between Pope and Catholic Tradition was so sharp that one of the two moments occurred that August when the Archbishop most seriously considered whether the See of Rome might be vacant. As can be heard from the recording of words he then spoke, he was agonizing over that clash: how possibly could a true Vicar of Christ be so destroying the Church? The Archbishop never finally adopted the sedevacantist solution, but let us see how clearly he stated the problem, and then offer once more a line of solution which he may have been too sane in mind to think of. Here is a summary of his words in August of 1976:—

People ask me what I think of the Pope [Paul VI]. It is an incredible mystery. The true Pope is the unity of the Church, inspired by the Holy Ghost, and protected by the promise of Our Lord in upholding the Faith. But in the aftermath of Vatican II, Paul VI is systematically destroying the Church. Nothing is spared: catechism, universities, Congregations, seminaries, schools. Everything Catholic is being destroyed. One looks for a solution.

A series of false solutions can be dismissed out of hand, e.g. Paul VI is a prisoner, drugged, victim of his underlings, etc. For when he blessed the Charismatics or kissed the feet of the Orthodox Patriarch, did he have a revolver at his head? I have watched him in public audiences, speaking with the skill, presence of mind, pertinence and intelligence of a man in full possession of his faculties. Cardinal Benelli told me that it was the Pope himself who wrote those letters to me [crushing Tradition], that he is fully informed, that he knows exactly what he is doing, it is his will, they are his decisions. The Cardinal said that he reported to the Pope every day, and would do so again, straight after our own conversation.

Then can Paul VI be not a true Pope? That is one possible hypothesis. Theologians have studied the problem. I do not know. Do not put words in my mouth. But the problem seems theologically insoluble.

The Archbishop spoke of Paul VI, but the problem is essentially the same for all six Conciliar Popes (except perhaps John-Paul I). Let us divide the problem in two: how can the true God allow such destruction of his Church? How can his true Vicars be the main destroyers?

As for Almighty God, firstly the destruction will be still worse at world’s end (Lk. XVIII, 8). Secondly, God may easily be purifying his Church to prepare for the Triumph of his Mother’s Immaculate Heart. Thirdly, God did protect Paul VI from utterly destroying the Church, when for instance he arranged for the “chance” discovery to Paul VI of a plan to dissolve the Papacy by the text of Lumen Gentium. This enabled the Pope to block the plan by adding the Nota Praevia.

As for the Vicars, Archbishop Lefebvre never seems to have considered the solution which follows, which may be why in that August even he seems to have been nearly impaled on the horns of the sedevacantist-or-liberal dilemma. But if with each year liberalism comes closer to confusing the mind of every man on earth, how should the Popes escape the universal malady of being “sincerely” wrong? Because they are educated men? But liberalism reigns especially in the schools and universities. So if the miseducated Conciliar Popes are “sincerely” convinced that “truth” evolves, they will not even by their grave errors be pertinaciously denying what they know to be defined Catholic Truth, because even defined Truth, if it is to be for them “truth,” evolves in their direction.

Kyrie eleison.

Living Popes

Living Popes on November 29, 2014

On January 29, 1949, Pope Pius XII made the following remarks about the importance of the Pope: If ever one day – speaking purely hypothetically – material Rome were to collapse; if ever this Vatican basilica, symbol of the one and only victorious Catholic Church, were to bury beneath its ruins the historic treasures and sacred tombs which it encloses, even then the Church would be in no way demolished or split. Christ’s promise to Peter would still hold true, the Papacy would last for ever, like the Church, one and indestructible, being founded on the Pope then living .”

Since these words are classic Church doctrine (only the underlining has been added), resting as they do on Our Lord’s own words (Mt. XVI, 16–18), then it is small wonder if, ever since 1962 when the living Popes became Conciliar, millions upon millions of Catholics have been driven to becoming likewise Conciliar and liberal. The only way out of the problem that sedevacantists can see is to deny that the Conciliar Popes have been Popes at all, which can seem to be common sense, but to most Catholics it seems even more to be common sense that the Church designed by God to rest upon the living Pope cannot have existed for the last half century (1962–2014) without one.

It is easy to see how the decline of Christian civilisation since the height of the Middle Ages has led to the present corruption of the living Popes. It is easy to see how God can have permitted this appalling corruption to punish that appalling decline. What is less easy to see is how the Church can still live when the living Popes on whom it is founded are convinced that liberalism, war on God, is Catholic. In Our Lord’s own words, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit and an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit (Mt. VII, 18).

But a tree half good, half bad, can produce fruits half good, half bad. Now taken as a whole, a mixture of good and bad is bad, but that does not mean that taken part by part, the mixture’s good parts are as bad as its bad parts. Cancer in the liver will kill me, but that does not mean that I have cancer in the lungs. Now no living churchman, any more than any man alive, is entirely good or entirely bad. We are all a fluctuating mixture until the day we die. So can there ever have been a living Pope whose fruits were entirely evil? The answer can only be, no. In which case the Catholic Church can have half-lived for the last 50 years on the half-good fruits of the Conciliar Popes, with a half-life permitted by God to purify his Church, but which he would never permit to go so far as to kill his Church.

Thus for example Paul VI wept for the lack of vocations. Benedict XVI hankered after Tradition. Even Pope Francis surely means to bring men to God when he drags God down to men. So, Conciliar Popes are dreadfully mistaken in their ideas, fatally ambiguous in the Faith where they need to be absolutely unambiguous. The Church has been and is dying beneath them, but whatever parts in them have still been good have enabled the Church to continue, and they have been needed as living heads to continue the body of the living Church, as Pius XII said. Then let us not fear that they will be allowed to kill off the Church, but let us for our part fight their liberalism tooth and nail and pray for their return to Catholic sanity, because we do need them for the life of our Church.

Kyrie eleison.

Context Upended

Context Upended on September 20, 2014

Starting out from arguments against sedevacantism as being a short-sighted error in a wholly abnormal situation, an Italian friend (C.C.) takes a longer view of that situation. Without being a priest or theologian, he ventures the opinion that sedevacantism is merely one of several attempts in the Church to fit the crisis of today into the categories of yesterday. There is no question of Catholic theology changing, but the real situation to which that theology has to be applied underwent a sea-change with Vatican II. Here is a key paragraph of his on that upended reality:—

“By its refusal of the objective reality of God’s existence and of the need to submit to his Law, today’s world is not normal, and the present Catholic unity is not normal either which has put man instead of God at the centre of things. Nor is it by a sudden swerve that the Church has arrived at this abnormal state of things, but following on a long and complex process of moving away from God, the disruptive effects of which showed up at Vatican II. For hundreds of years the germs of dissolution have been fostered within the Church, as have the men harbouring these germs, and they have beeen allowed to occupy all ranks of the hierarchy, up to and including the See of Peter.”

My friend goes on that if one fails to take into consideration this overall abnormality of the present state of the Church, which is unbelievably, yet truly, worse than ever, one runs the risk of dealing with a reality that no longer exists, in terms of reference that no longer apply. Thus for example the sedevacantists will say that today’s churchmen must know what they are doing, because they are intelligent and educated men. Not so, says C.C.: their preaching and practice may well no longer be Catholic, but they are convinced that they are wholly orthodox. The whole world has gone mad. They have merely gone mad with it, not by a loss of reason but by having given up the use of it, and as their Catholic faith grows weaker, so there is less and less to stop them from losing it altogether.

But then, one might object, God must have abandoned his Church. To reply, CC resorts to three quotations from Scripture. Firstly, Lk.XVIII, 8, where Our Lord wonders if he will even find the Faith on earth when he comes back. Obviously a small remainder of priests and laity (with perhaps some bishops) will be enough to ensure the indefectibility of the Church until the end of the world (one thinks of the present difficulties of the “Resistance” in taking shape). Likewise, secondly, Mt.XXIV, 11–14, where it is foreseen that many false prophets will deceive many souls, and charity will grow cold. And thirdly, Lk.XXII, 31–32, where Our Lord instructs Peter to confirm his brethren in the faith after he has converted, strongly suggesting that his faith will first have failed. So almost the whole hierarchy can fail, including Peter, without the Church ceasing to be indefectible, somewhat like when the Apostles all ran away in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt.XXVI, 56).

In conclusion, CC’s vision for the Church of tomorrow or the day after strongly resembles that of Fr Calmel: let each of us do his duty according to his state of life, and take part in building a network of little forts of the Faith, each with a priest to ensure the sacraments, but with no henceforth inapplicable theology of the Church, nor unobtainable canonical approval, nor with any out-dated dividing-walls over the top of which the Faith will have flowed. The forts will be united by the Truth and will have mutual contacts of charity. The rest is in God’s hands.

Kyrie eleison.

Popes Fallible

Popes Fallible on September 13, 2014

Neither liberals nor sedevacantists appreciate being told that they are like heads and tails of the same coin, but it is true. For instance, neither of them can conceive of a third alternative. See for instance in his Letter to Three Bishops of April 14, 2012 , how Bishop Fellay could see no alternative to his liberalism except sedevacantism. Conversely, for many a sedevacantist if one accepts that any of the Conciliar Popes has really been Pope, then one can only be a liberal, and if one criticises sedevacantism, then one is promoting liberalism. But not at all!

Why not? Because both of them are making the same error of exaggerating the Pope’s infallibility. Why? Might it be because both of them are modern men who believe more in persons than in institutions? And why should that be a feature of modern men? Because from more or less Protestantism onwards, fewer and fewer institutions have truly sought the common good, while more and more seek some private interest such as money (my claim on you), which of course diminishes our respect for them. For instance, good men saved for a while the rotten institution of modern banking from having immediately all its evil effects, but the rotten banksters are at last showing what the institutions of fractional reserve banking and central banks were, in themselves, from the beginning. The Devil is in modern structures, thanks to the enemies of God and man.

So it is understandable if modern Catholics have tended to put too much faith in the Pope and too little in the Church, and here is the answer to that reader who asked me why I do not write about infallibility in the same way that the classic Catholic theology manuals do. Those manuals are marvellous in their way, but they were all written before Vatican II, and they tended to attach to the Pope an infallibility which belongs to the Church. For instance, the summit of infallibility is liable to be presented in the manuals as a solemn definition by the Pope, or by Pope with Council, but in any case by the Pope. The liberal-sedevacantist dilemma has been the consequence and, as it were, a punishment of this tendency to overrate the person and underrate the institution, because the Church is no merely human institution.

For, firstly, the Solemn Magisterium’s snow-cap on the Ordinary Magisterium’s mountain is its summit only in a very limited way – it is completely supported by the rock summit beneath the snow. And secondly, by the Church’s most authoritative text on infallibility, the Definition of the truly Catholic Council of Vatican I (1870), we know that the Pope’s infallibility comes from the Church, and not the other way round. When the Pope engages all four conditions necessary for ex cathedra teaching, then, says the Definition, he possesses “that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine.” But of course! Where else can infallibility come from, except from God? The best of human beings, and some Popes have been very good human beings, may be inerrant, i.e. make no mistakes, but as long as they have original sin they cannot be infallible as God alone can be. If they are infallible, the infallibility must come through, but from outside, their humanity, from God, who chooses to bestow it through the Catholic Church, and that infallibility need only be a momentary gift, for the duration of the Definition.

Therefore outside of a Pope’s ex cathedra moments, nothing stops him from talking nonsense such as the new religion of Vatican II. Therefore neither liberals nor sedevacantists need or should heed that nonsense, because, as Archbishop Lefebvre said, they have 2000 years’ worth of Ordinarily infallible Church teaching by which to judge that it is nonsense.

Kyrie eleison.