sedevacantism

Bp. THOMAS SPEAKS

Bp. THOMAS SPEAKS on August 17, 2024

This true disciple made no compromise,

And, to his Master, proves still faithful and wise.

Bishop Thomas Aquinas, Superior of the “Resistance” Benedictine Monastery in the hills behind Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, does not often make public declarations, but the one that he made at the end of last month on “Archbishop Lefebvre, Archbishop Vigano and Sedevacantism” might make us wish that he took position in public more often. In those crucial years of the 1970’s and 1980’s Fr. Thomas Aquinas was never a seminarian directly under Archbishop Lefebvre inside the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X, but he was closer to the Archbishop in thought and mind than many of his own seminarians, and could be called at that time a confidant of the Archbishop. His faithfulness to the Archbishop’s way of thinking is clear from this recent article of Bishop Thomas, translated below, complete, from a French version of the original –

Archbishop Vigano has behaved like a true hero ever since he realised, or began to realise, just how the Conciliar Church is doctrinally and morally decomposing. Unfortunately he seems to be leaning towards the position that the Apostolic See is vacant. Time will tell if he is truly a sedevacantist.

As for Archbishop Lefebvre, he had already begun this fight with the Conciliar Church when it was even more decisive than it is today. He had gained the trust of Catholics all over the world, thanks to his solid doctrinal formation and to his superior practical judgment. The latter enabled him to avoid both the trap to the left of the Ecclesia Dei communities going back under Rome, and the trap to the right of sedevacantism. He pointed out precisely how on the left Dom Gerard and others like him were leading their communities to commit suicide by placing themselves under the authority of the modernists, while the sedevacantists on the right were putting themselves in a position as uncertain as it is dangerous, by stating more than Church teaching allows one to state.

Some people think that Archbishop Lefebvre would be a sedevacantist today. I do not think so. I even think the opposite. I think the arguments he gave when he was alive have lost nothing of their force or relevance today. His arguments are simple. What becomes of the Church if the Popes from John XXIII to Francis were never Popes? Were the Cardinals appointed by them not valid Cardinals? Who will elect the next Pope? How can we ever have a Pope again? Sedevacantism would seem to imperil the very existence of the Church. Let us rather wait for the Church to give official judgment on the question one day, so as to resolve it once and for all.

Given how opinions held and measures undertaken diverge within Tradition today, I see only one reasonable line of conduct: to hold on to and to hand down what we received from Archbishop Lefebvre, in doctrine and in practice. Many will object that in practice one needs to take into account how the state of the Church crisis has evolved from the Archbishop’s day to our own. True, there have been changes, but they are not essential. The crisis remains essentially the same. Like the Arian crisis which lasted 60 years, this crisis carries on, unchanged. Hence the relevance of the Archbishop’s example.

May Our Lady, conqueror of all heresies, grant us the grace to overcome the attacks of the Devil and of the modernists.

+Tomas Aquinas, O.S.B.

Here is the Catholic wisdom of Archbishop Lefebvre, restated for our times, most fruitful for the Church when judged by its fruits, of not deviating to the right or to the left, as the Lord God commanded Joshua when he succeeded to Moses as leader of the Israelites (Joshua I, 7). Truth is the measure of this centre position, and not where right or left may happen to find themselves, because Truth is of God.

Kyrie eleison.

LAW DEFINED

LAW DEFINED on August 3, 2024

And if I don’t see the monstrosity, I must pray,

As often urged, full fifteen Mysteries a day!

The desperate attempts of Pope Francis to use all of his papal Authority to crush the Tridentine rite of Mass and eliminate it from the Catholic Church once and for all, are rightly gaining less and less traction from among Catholics. Just how Almighty God can have allowed His own Authority that He entrusts to His Vicar on earth to be so misused, remains a mystery, because of course He gives it into the hands of men to build up His Church and not to pull it down. Many Catholics are so agonised by the problem that they are resorting to the simple solution of sedevacantism, because by that theory of there having been no valid Pope since John XXIII (1958–1963), all six Popes since Vatican II (1962–1965) have not been Popes at all. But that theory, which seems to solve the problem of the Conciliar Popes with such ease, takes many contradictory forms, and can lead to Catholics abandoning the Faith altogether, on the grounds that there can be no valid priesthood left at all, so they might as well stay at home rather than go to Mass. Thus sedevacantism can raise rather more problems than it seems to solve.

Such fruits suggest that sedevacantism may well not be the right solution to the serious problem set by all six Conciliar Popes, one after another, and culminating in the special horrors of Pope Francis. It may be a good moment to remember the fruitful solution of Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991), Traditionalism, of which he was the outstanding pioneer in its opposition today to the modernism of Vatican II.

Tradition is Catholicism, he said, and Catholicism is Tradition. “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and for ever” (Heb. XIII, 8). Centuries of Protestantism and Liberalism have created a modern world which is so glamorous and seductive that in the end even the Vicars of Christ on earth have allowed themselves to be persuaded that Jesus needs to adapt himself to modern man, and not the other way round. But Jesus and His Church need no modernisation, all they need is to be presented as Catholic Tradition always used to do in times past. And the astonishing success of the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X all over the world, at least until he died in 1991, proved that the Traditional version of Jesus and His Church can still flourish, despite modernity.

Then what did the Archbishop say about modernist Catholic Authority? He said that even Catholic Popes remain by themselves fallible men, unless they engage their infallible Authority, which they can only do on the four strict conditions clearly laid down in the solemn Definition of infallibility of 1870. If all four of those conditions are not present – and the Conciliar Popes never presented all four in their promotion of the Conciliar novelties – then Popes are as capable as any normal human being of making mistakes. And so all the modernist novelties of Vatican II in no way come under the protection of papal infallibility, which is highly restricted in its practical application.

But what about the Pope’s papal commands to abandon the Traditional rite of the Latin Mass? Are we not bound to obey him? No, we are not bound to obey him because it is not a lawful command, as Archbishop Lefebvre always said, and as the Catholic Church has always said. The Pope has no power from God to command just anything that comes into his head. The definition of law is that it is a command of reason for the common good made by those who are responsible for the common good. So if it is not for the common good, like any law pretending to legalise abortion, then it is no law at all.

Therefore when it comes to the sacrifice of the Mass, of which Padre Pio said that our planet earth can sooner do without the light of the sun than without that sacrifice, to replace its most venerable and dignified rite in Latin, centred on God, with a new rite in modern languages, doctrinally doubtful, without dignity, invented to centre on man, is so clearly opposed to the true common good of the Catholic Church that it cannot possibly be the object of a true law of the Church. Therefore no such pretended law need be obeyed, however many times Pope Paul VI or Pope Francis or their successors may try to impose any such monstrosity.

Kyrie eleison.

Anti-Lefebvrism – II

Anti-Lefebvrism – II on April 14, 2018

Is there a reason why NM (see last week’s “Comments”), in order to deal with the problem of the Conciliar Popes, resorts to the dramatic solution of declaring that they have not been Popes at all? There would seem to be. The Catholic Church is both human (a society of human beings) and divine (specially animated by the Holy Ghost), and it is important not to confuse the two. Human beings as such are all fallible. God alone is infallible. The mistake of Catholics resorting to the dramatic solution of NM is that they are attributing to the human Popes too much of the infallibility that can come from God alone. Let us take an illustration from any modern home.

When I put an electric plug into a socket in the wall, the electric current does not come from the plug, it comes from the power station through the wall and socket into the plug and whatever appliance needs the electric current. The power station is God. The wall and socket are the Church. The current is the Church’s infallibility, coming from God. The plug is the four conditions which the Pope alone can insert into the socket. Those conditions are of course that he 1) speaks as Pope 2) in order to fix once and for all 3) a point of faith or morals 4) with the intention of binding all Catholics to accept it. Through the Pope’s engaging the four conditions, he and he alone has guaranteed access as a human being to the Church’s divine infallibility. The four conditions are the Pope’s to engage. The infallibility is God’s to engage.

Also of course, this particular socket, known as the Church’s Extraordinary Magisterium (EM), is not the only access of human beings to the Church’s infallibility. They accede to it much more by the Church’s Ordinary Magisterium (OM), which is Catholic Tradition, or, what all the Church’s teachers, Popes and Bishops in particular, have taught all over the world ever since Jesus Christ as God deposited that Deposit of the Faith with His Church, confirmed infallibly in the Apostles at Pentecost and handed down infallibly by them until the last of them died. From then on that doctrine was in the hands of fallible human beings, to whom God left their free-will to teach error if they chose to do so. But if ever human error made doubtful what belonged to the infallible doctrine and what did not, God gave to His Church also the Extraordinary Magisterium, precisely to fix once and for all what does and what does not belong to the Ordinary Magisterium. Thus OM is to EM as dog to tail, and not as tail to dog!

The problem of Catholics without number ever since the solemn definition in 1870 of the Church’s infallibility is that since the access of the EM to the Church’s infallibility is automatically guaranteed in a way in which the access of the OM is not, then the EM seems superior, and Catholics tend to exaggerate the EM and to transfer to the Pope personally that infallibility which in reality belongs automatically only to the Church. This means that if the Pope makes serious errors like those of the Conciliar Popes, then the only possible explanation is that they are not Popes. Or, if they are Popes, then one must follow their errors. The logic is good, but the premise is false. Popes are not as infallible as all that. They can make serious errors, as Vatican II and its Conciliar Popes have shown, as never before in all Church history! But the Church remains infallible, and therefore I know that Catholic Tradition will last to the end of the world despite the very worst that any poor Popes may try to do between now and then.

But how do I know that to the Pope as Pope belongs only the privileged access (four conditions) to the electric current (infallibility), and not the current itself which belongs to the wall (the Church)? Because the very definition of infallibility in 1870 says so! I need only read:—when the Pope engages the four conditions (mentioned above), then he “is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals.”

So Catholic Popes are free to make terrible mistakes without the Church being any less infallible.

Kyrie eleison.

Anti-”Lefebvrist” Argument – I

Anti-”Lefebvrist” Argument – I on April 7, 2018

To attack the French Dominican priests of Avrillé for their “Lefebvrism,” i.e. for their refusal to accept that the Conciliar Popes since Paul VI have not been Popes at all, a French layman – Mr. N.M. – has just written an article accusing the Dominicans of rejecting three Catholic dogmas: that the Pope has primacy of jurisdiction over the Universal Church; that the Church’s Universal Ordinary Magisterium is infallible; that it is the Church’s living Magisterium which determines what Catholics must believe. Normally such questions of doctrine may be best left to the experts in doctrine, but ours are not normal times. Today Catholics can have to rely on their own Catholic good sense to decide such questions for themselves.

Let us look at all three questions in a simple and practical way. If I want to accept that the Popes have been true Popes since Paul VI, why should I have to deny firstly that the Pope is head of the Church, secondly that the Church’s normal teaching is infallible and thirdly that the living Pope tells me what I should believe? Let us look at N.M.’s arguments, one by one.

As to the first point, NM quotes the thoroughly anti-liberal Council of Vatican I (1870–1871) to the effect that the Pope is the direct and immediate head of every diocese, every priest and every Catholic. If then like all Lefebvrists, I refuse to obey him, I am implicitly denying that he is my head as a Catholic, so I am denying that the Pope is what Vatican I defined him to be. Answer: I am not at all denying that the Conciliar Popes have the authority to command me as a Catholic, I am only saying that their Catholic authority does not include the authority to make me turn myself into a Protestant, as I will do if I follow their commands in line with Vatican II.

Secondly, NM argues that Vatican I also stated that the everyday teaching of Pope and bishops is infallible. Now if ever we had serious teaching of Pope and Bishops together, it was at Vatican II. If then I refuse that teaching, I am implicitly denying that the Church’s Universal Ordinary Magisterium is infallible. Answer, no, I am not. I fully recognise that when a doctrine has been taught in the Church nearly everywhere, at all times and by all Popes and Bishops, it is infallible, but if it has been taught only

in modern times by the 20th century Popes and Bishops of Vatican II, then it is contrary to what was taught by Popes and Bishops at all other times of the Church, and I do not consider myself bound to accept it. As I accept the heavyweight UOM of all time, so I reject the lightweight UOM of today, contradicting it.

Thirdly, NM argues that the true Pope has the living authority to tell me as a Catholic what I must today believe. If then I refuse to believe what the Conciliar Popes have told me to believe, I am rejecting their living authority as arbiters of the Faith. Answer: no, I am not. I am using my eyes to read, and my God-given brain to judge, that what the Conciliar Popes tell me contradicts what all previous Popes back to St Peter tell me, and I prefer to follow the heavy weight of 261 Popes telling me what to believe against the light weight of six Conciliar Popes. “But then you are rejecting the living authority of the living Pope as arbiter of the Faith!” Only because I am following, obeying and submitting to 261 Popes as arbiters of that Faith which my eyes and my brain tell me that the Conciliar Popes are not following. “But then you are backing your own eyes and brain against the Catholic Pope!” God gave me eyes and a brain which function, and when I come before Him to be judged, I shall answer for the use I made of them.

It is clear that NM’s own answer to the problem of Popes protestantising, modernising and Conciliar, is to deny that they ever were Popes. It should be equally clear that to that problem, which is very real, I am not obliged to adopt NM’s drastic solution. Nor, if I refuse to adopt it, am I obliged to deny three Church dogmas. Peace be to NM.

Kyrie eleison.

Sedevacantism Again – II

Sedevacantism Again – II on October 8, 2016

For any Catholic soul realizing today the gravity of the crisis in the Church and agonizing over it, the simplicity of sedevacantism dismissing as invalid the Church and Popes of Vatican II can become a serious temptation. Worse, the seeming logic of the ecclesiavacantists’ and sedevacantists’ arguments can turn that temptation into a mental trap which can at worst lead a Catholic to lose his faith altogether. That is why these “Comments” will return in more detail to the main argument of the scattershot of arguments laid out in the article by BpS from 1991 mentioned here last week. Here again is that argument:—

Major: the Catholic Church is absolutely indefectible (it has God’s own guarantee that it will last to the end of the world – cf. Mt XXVIII, 20). Minor: But the Conciliar or Novus Ordo Church, overwhelmed by neo-modernism and liberalism, represents an absolute defection. Conclusion: the Novus Ordo Church is absolutely not Catholic and its Popes are absolutely not Popes. In other words the Church is absolutely white while the Newchurch is absolutely black, so Church and Newchurch are absolutely different. To minds which like to think in black and white with nothing in between, this argument has much appeal. But to minds which recognize that in real life things are often grey, or a mixture of black and white (without black ceasing to be black or white ceasing to be white), the argument is too absolute to be true. Thus in the Major there is an exaggeration of the Church’s indefectibility, and in the Minor there is an exaggeration of the Newchurch’s defection. Theory can be absolute, but reality rarely is absolute. Let us look at indefectibility and the Conciliar defection as they are in reality.

As for the Major, sedevacantists frequently exaggerate the Church’s indefectibility, just as they frequently exaggerate the Popes’ infallibility, because that is what they need to support their emotional horror at what has become of the Catholic Church since the Council. But in reality just as that infallibility does not exclude great errors of some Popes in Church history and only applies when the Pope is either, Ordinarily, saying what the Church has always said, or, Extraordinarily, is engaging all four conditions of the 1870 definition, so the Church’s indefectibility does not absolutely exclude some huge defections at given moments of Church history, such as the triumphs of Islam or Protestantism or of the Antichrist (Lk. XVIII, 8), it only excludes absolutely a total defection, or total failure (Mt. XXVIII, 20). Thus indefectibility is not as absolute as BpS pretends.

As for the Minor, it is true that the defection of Conciliarism is considerably more grave than that of either Islam or Protestantism because it strikes at the head and heart of the Church in Rome, which they did not do. Nevertheless even half a century of Conciliarism (1965 to 2016) has not made the Church totally defect, or fail. For instance Archbishop Lefebvre – and he was not alone – held high the Faith from 1970 to 1991, his successors did the same, more or less, from 1991 to 2012, and the embattled “Resistance” upholds his line still, and before the Church humanly collapses in a not too distant future, unquestionably its indefectibility will be divinely saved, just as before world’s end – Mt. XXIV, 21–22. Thus Conciliarism as a defection of the Church is not as absolute as BpS pretends, either.

So his syllogism needs to be recast – Major: the Church’s indefectibility does not exclude huge defections but only a total defection. Minor: Vatican II was a huge but not total defection of the Church (even if Catholics aware of its danger must totally avoid it, for fear of contamination). Conclusion: the Church’s indefectibility does not exclude Vatican II. In brief, God’s own Church is bigger than all the wickedness of Devil or man, even Vatican II. The Conciliar defection may well be of an unprecedented gravity in all Church history, but the Church’s indefectibility and the Popes’ infallibility come from God and not from men. Like liberals, the sedevacantists are thinking humanly, all too humanly.

Kyrie eleison.

Again, Sedevacantism – I

Again, Sedevacantism – I on October 1, 2016

It may irk a number of readers of these “Comments” if they return once more to the theme of the Conciliar Popes not being Popes at all, but the recent translation into French of an article from 1991 in English shows how the arguments for sedevacantism need repeatedly to be demonstrated as being not so conclusive as they may appear. Liberals need no such demonstration, because for them sedevacantism is no temptation. However there are select Catholic souls drawn by the grace of God out of liberalism towards Catholic Tradition for whom sedevacantism becomes positively dangerous. The Devil does not care whether we lose our balance to the right or to the left, so long as we lose our balance.

For indeed the error of sedevacantism may in theory be an error neither as deep nor as grave as the universal mind-rot of liberalism, but in practice how often one observes that minds snap shut with sedevacantism, and that what started out as an acceptable opinion (what Catholic can say that the words and deeds of Pope Francis are Catholic?), tends to become an unacceptable dogmatic certainty (what Catholic can judge with certainty of such a question?), and from there to impose itself as the dogma of dogmas, as though a person’s Catholicity is to be judged by whether or not he believes in our having had no real Pope since, say, Pius XII.

One reason offered by previous “Comments” for this often observed internal dynamic of sedevacantism may be the Gordian-knot simplicity with which it slices through an agonizing and faith-threatening problem: “How can these destroyers of the Church be true Catholic Popes?” Answer, they are not Popes at all. “Oh, what a relief! I need no longer agonize.” The mind snaps shut, sedevacantism is to be shared as though it were the Gospel with whoever will listen (or not listen), and at worst it can be extended from the Popes to all cardinals, bishops and priests, so that a once believing Catholic turns into a “home-aloner” who gives up attending Mass altogether. Will he succeed in keeping the Faith? And his children? Here is the danger.

Therefore to keep our Catholic Faith in balance and to avoid the traps laid today to its right as to its left, let us look at the arguments of BpS in the 15-page article mentioned above. (“BpS” is an abbreviation which many readers will identify at once, but it need not be spelled out here because we are more concerned with his arguments than with his person.) In his article at least he does think, and he does have a Catholic’s faith in the Papacy, otherwise the Conciliar Popes would be no problem for him. This logic and faith are what is best in sedevacantists, but neither BpS nor they are working from the whole picture: God cannot let go of his Church, but he can let go of his churchmen.

For here is his argument in a nutshell – Major: the Church is indefectible. Minor: at Vatican II the Church went liberal, which was a major defection. Conclusion: the Conciliar Church is not the real Church, which means that the Conciliar Popes who led or followed Vatican II cannot have been real Popes.

The argument looks good. However, from the very same Major and Minor can come a liberal Conclusion: the Church is indefectible, the Church went liberal, so I too, as a Catholic, must go liberal. That sedevacantism thus shares its roots with liberalism should make any sedevacantist think twice. BpS notices the common roots, and calls them “ironic,” but they are much more than that. They point to liberals and sedevacantists making the same error, which must be in the Major. Indeed both alike misunderstand the Church’s indefectibility, as they mistake the Popes’ infallibility. See these “Comments” next week for a more detailed analysis of BpS’s argument.

Kyrie eleison.