Always Consigned to Arguing About the Inarguable, part one

Much of the commentary about the bill banning almost all abortions (the almost, of course, refers to the not-so-insignificant and immoral “life of the mother” exception) passed by the Alabama State Legislature that has been authored by naturalists who label themselves variously as “pro-life conservatives” or “pro-life Americans” has focused on the supposed harm that that the bill would do in retarding what they believe to be “changing attitudes” about abortion. Some of these commentators, including a man named David Harsanyi, have argued that the Alabama bill detracts from efforts by abortion “extremists” to legalize infanticide during and after birth (see Abortion Advocates are losing: Don't give them a lifeline).

Although these arguments are understandable, they are, however, very wrong as we should never be arguing about whether the “people” can “accept” the simple fact that it is morally impermissible for anyone to do anything that causes the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human being. Willful murder is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, and no civil law that permits any innocent human being to be put to death is morally just. One can make all the arguments one wants in favor of the “incremental” approach to retarding evils such as abortion. Nonetheless, though, most of those who favor the “incremental” approach premise their various “solutions” on merely restricting surgical baby-killing under the cover of the civil law without seeking to it entirely as it is believed that it would be neither prudent nor politically advisable to do so.

After all, most of the incrementalists accept each of the supposed “hard cases” “exceptions” that existed in most state laws prior to the move to eliminate those exceptions altogether in favor what was at first an “incremental” effort to make surgical baby-killing more accessible in the decade prior to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973. In other words, the supposed “hard cases” “exceptions” were the means by which pro-abort agitators such as the late Bernard Nathanson, Lawrence Lader, William Baird (who said “Who burned me?” when he was once sprinkled with Holy Water by a Catholic woman praying Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary outside his abortuary on the fifth floor of a building on Fulton Street in Hempstead, New York, in the) and others used to “open the door” to surgical abortion-on-demand. “Exceptions” in pre-Roe state legislation led to Roe v. Wade, and the acceptance of “exceptions” by pro-life “incrementalists” will keep baby-killing available under the cover of the civil law ad infinitum.

Thus, good readers, efforts by various state legislatures to challenge Roe v. Wade are very well-intentioned but they are doomed to failure at the practical level even if a majority of Supreme Court justices sustained those laws and, in effect, made surgical baby-killing a matter to be “decided” at the state level, whether in popular referenda or in state legislatures as it is completely unrealistic to expect that physicians who support baby-killing to do anything other than to fill out the necessary paperwork to “certify” that an “exception” sanctioned by the law exists so that a mother can pay him to assassinate her baby. Surgical abortion-on-demand will never be ended by even the best of state legislation even if it is sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Today’s “champions” of protecting the “settled law” would become tomorrow’s “martyrs” for trying to unsettle any court decision denying them the “right” to do with innocent human life as they see fit. Perhaps even more importantly, it is beyond the authority of human beings to provide legal sanction to the direct killing of any innocent human being, and that includes those being killed by "palliative care," including those who are said to be suffering from a deteriorated "quality of life, or vivisected to death after being declared "brain dead" as well those who are deemed "fit" to be starved and dehydrated to death.

As noted in past commentaries on this site, however, it is my belief that the institutionalist who serves as the Chief Justice of the United States of America, John Glover Roberts, would vote to uphold any state legislation that sought to ban most abortions, and it is also my belief that Roberts would be reassured in this regard by any spiritual direction he might receive from an Opus Dei presbyter if he even thought it necessary to seek it. John Glover Roberts twisted himself into figurative pretzels to uphold the nonexistent constitutionality of the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and then to maintain its existence even after the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro had established “state exchanges” on terms not covered by the law. Roberts used raw legal positivism both times, and he is capable of doing so with Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton as surgical abortion-on-demand has become so “socially acceptable” that he would argue in favor of avoiding social upheavals that would follow even a de facto reversal of those dreadful decisions.

A reversal of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, no matter unlikely it is now, would not “settle” the matter as the reversal would be based upon the illicit premise that it is up to the “people” and/or their elected representatives in the fifty states to “decide” whether to have, restrict or prohibit entirely the surgical execution of innocent preborn babies.

Even an unlikely reversal of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton would not end the surgical execution of the innocent preborn under cover of the civil law as ten states have trigger laws that would maintain the “legal status” of surgical baby killing on-demand while eighteen other states have “trigger” laws that would end most, although not all, surgical abortions. The “not all” is important as, despite the emotional appeals that are made to justify the “life of the mother exception,” it is never medically necessary to kill a preborn baby to “save” the life of his mother and it is never morally justified to directly intend to kill one innocent human being to save another. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy Our American Cousin?

No mother has any "choice" to be made between her own life and that of her preborn child. Although the improvements in medical technology have made it possible for expectant mothers with serious maladies to be treated in a manner that will permit a baby to be delivered at the point of viability, whereupon more aggressive treatment of a mother's condition can be undertaken, if possible and advised, it is still nevertheless the case that in those rare circumstances, which certainly do occur now and again, where a mother is faced with the possibility of sacrificing her own life so that her preborn baby can be born. A mother formed in the truths of the Catholic Faith knows that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ meant it when He said the following:

[12] This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. [13] Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15: 12)

A mother who knows the Catholic Faith understands that, as difficult as it can be to those steeped in emotionalism and sentimentality, she can, if she dies in a state of Sanctifying Grace, do more for her child from eternity than she ever could here on the face of this earth. Moreover, those who have died in a state of Sanctifying Grace are more perfectly united to us than they ever were on the face of this earth.

We must think supernaturally at all times. We must think as Catholics at all times no matter the natural pull of human emotions and heartstrings that will certainly affect each of us at various times. We are flesh and blood human beings. We would be heartless creatures if we were not torn in difficult circumstances of facing an earthly separation from our loved ones by means of what is considered to be an "early" death. We must love God's Holy Will first and foremost, praying to His Most Blessed Mother to send us graces to accept His will so that we can obey it as we observe every precept of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

Naturalists, of course, do not understand this, which is why almost all of those in public life who say that they are "pro-life" support the direct, intentional taking of innocent human lives in their mothers' wombs under any conditions at all. Such people cannot see the contradiction represented by claiming to be "pro-life" while supporting the direct killing of babies in some instances.

To wit, then Texas Governor George Walker Bush simply shrugged his shoulders as he smirked during a televised debate in 1999, saying the following with a sense of exasperation after Dr. Alan Keyes asked him how he could be said to be opposed to abortion while supporting it in some circumstances: "I can't explain it. It's just how I feel."

God's law is not a matter of feeling, something that Pope Pius XII pointed out in his November 26, 1951, Address to the Association of Large Families.

Consider these very telling words from the early part of this address, begging your pardon that they are from a Google translation of the original text, which is in the Italian language:

If there is another danger that threatens the family, not since yesterday, but long ago, which, however, at present, is growing visibly, it can become fatal [to societies], that is, the attack and the disruption of the fruit of conjugal morality.

We have, in recent years, taken every opportunity to expose the one or the other essential point of the moral law, and more recently to indicate it as a whole, not only by refuting the errors that corrupt it, but also showing in a positive sense, the office the importance, the value for the happiness of the spouses, children and all family, for stability and the greater social good from their homes up to the State and the Church itself.

At the heart of this doctrine is that marriage is an institution at the service of life. In close connection with this principle, we, according to the constant teaching of the Church, have illustrated a argument that it is not only one of the essential foundations of conjugal morality, but also of social morality in general: namely, that the direct attack innocent human life, as a means to an end - in this case the order to save another life - is illegal.

Innocent human life, whatever his condition, is always inviolate from the first instance of its existence and it can never be attacked voluntarily. This is a fundamental right of human beings. A fundamental value is the Christian conception of life must be respected as valid for the life still hidden in the womb against direct abortion and against all innocent human life thereafter. There can be no direct murders of a child before, during and after childbirth. As established may be the legal distinction between these different stages of development life born or unborn, according to the moral law, all direct attacks on inviolable human life are serious and illegal.

This principle applies to the child's life, like that of mother's. Never, under any circumstances, has the Church has taught that the life of child must be preferred to that of the mother. It would be wrong to set the issue with this alternative: either the child's life or that of mother. No, nor the mother's life, nor that of her child, can be subjected to an act of direct suppression. For the one side and the other the need can be only one: to make every effort to save the life of both, mother and child (see Pious XI Encycl. Casti Connubii, 31 dec. 1930, Acta Ap. Sedis vol. 22, p.. 562-563).

It is one of the most beautiful and noble aspirations of medicine trying ever new ways to ensure both their lives. What if, despite all the advances of science, still remain, and will remain in the future, a doctor says that the mother is going to die unless here child is killed in violation of God's commandment: Thou shalt not kill!  We must strive until the last moment to help save the child and the mother without attacking either as we bow before the laws of nature and the dispositions of Divine Providence.

But - one may object - the mother's life, especially of a mother of a numerous family, is incomparably greater than a value that of an unborn child. The application of the theory of balance of values to the matter which now occupies us has already found acceptance in legal discussions. The answer to this nagging objection is not difficult. The inviolability of the life of an innocent person does not depend by its greater or lesser value. For over ten years, the Church has formally condemned the killing of the estimated life as "worthless', and who knows the antecedents that provoked such a sad condemnation, those who can ponder the dire consequences that would be reached, if you want to measure the inviolability of innocent life at its value, you must well appreciate the reasons that led to this arrangement.

Besides, who can judge with certainty which of the two lives is actually more valuable? Who knows which path will follow that child and at what heights it can achieve and arrive at during his life? We compare Here are two sizes, one of whom nothing is known. We would like to cite an example in this regard, which may already known to some of you, but that does not lose some of its evocative value.

It dates back to 1905. There lived a young woman of noble family and even more noble senses, but slender and delicate health. As a teenager, she had been sick with a small apical pleurisy, which appeared healed; when, however, after contracting a happy marriage, she felt a new life blossoming within her, she felt ill and soon there was a special physical pain that dismayed that the two skilled health professionals, who watched  her with loving care. That old scar of the pleurisy had been awakened and, in the view of the doctors, there was no time to lose to save this gentle lady from death. The concluded that it was necessary to proceed without delay to an abortion.

Even the groom agreed. The seriousness of the case was very painful. But when the obstetrician attending to the mother announced their resolution to proceed with an abortion, the mother, with firm emphasis, "Thank you for your pitiful tips, but I can not truncate the life of my child! I can not, I can not! I feel already throbbing in my breast, it has the right to live, it comes from God must know God and to love and enjoy it." The husband asked, begged, pleaded, and she remained inflexible, and calmly awaited the event.

The child was born regularly, but immediately after the health of the mother went downhill. The outbreak spread to the lungs and the decay became progressive. Two months later she went to extremes, and she saw her little girl growing very well one who had grown very healthy. The mother looked at her robust baby and saw his sweet smile, and then she quietly died.

Several years later there was in a religious institute a very young sister, totally dedicated to the care and education of children abandoned, and with eyes bent on charges with a tender motherly love. She loved the tiny sick children and as if she had given them life. She was the daughter of the sacrifice, which now with her big heart has spread much love among the children of the destitute. The heroism of the intrepid mother was not in vain! (See Andrea Majocchi. " Between burning scissors," 1940, p.. 21 et seq.). But we ask: Is Perhaps the Christian sense, indeed even purely human, vanished in this point of no longer being able to understand the sublime sacrifice of the mother and the visible action of divine Providence, which made quell'olocausto born such a great result? (Pope Pius XII, Address to Association of Large Families, November 26, 1951; I used Google Translate to translate this address from the Italian as it is found at AAS Documents, p. 855; you will have to scroll down to page 855, which takes some time, to find the address.)

Let me repeat: Pope Pius XII slammed the National-Not-Right-to-Life Committee and all so-called "pro-life" politicians who support any exceptions to the inviolability of innocent human life at any time, including that for the "life of the mother."

It is upon that false premise of the "life of the mother exception" that the conciliar "bishops" have embraced the inclusion of it in every legislative proposal introduced in Congress without even attempting to pressure supposedly pro-life members of various legislatures, including those in both houses of the Congress of the United States of America, believing that doing so will help to convince "reasonable" people that they and the politicians they support are not "radicals" or "extremists," that such concessions are "necessary" to make in the realm prudence. As will be seen below, the conciliar "bishops" have much in common in this regard with one Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson.

Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson and Extremism

Despite all the hysteria that is taking place now, a piece of legislation that sought to end all surgical abortions without restriction would not be “extreme.” Such a law would be just. Indeed, such a law is a duty of the civil state, which also has the duty to punish baby-killers severely, up to and including the imposition of the death penalty. It is entirely laughable for the eighty-nine year-old Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson, the founder of the misnamed Christian Broadcasting Network, to contend that the almost-total ban of surgical abortions signed into law by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey was “extreme”.

Pat Robertson, a televangelist and Christian fundamentalist who has long opposed abortion rights, says the new anti-abortion bill in Alabama is too “extreme.”

The bill, passed on Tuesday in the Alabama state Senate, will, if signed into law by the governor, outlaw nearly all abortions in the state and make performing one a felony unless the mother’s health is at risk. Proposed amendments that would make exceptions for women who are victims of rape and incest were rejected by lawmakers.

“I think Alabama has gone too far," Robertson said Wednesday on his long-running TV program, "The 700 Club," referring to the hefty prison sentence for anyone who performs an abortion -- 99 years or life behind bars.

The bill, awaiting a signature by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, is further reigniting a debate over Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion across the nation, and it could have justices rethinking that landmark ruling, but Robertson has his doubts about putting forth this case as a test case.

"It’s an extreme law, and they want to challenge Roe vs. Wade, but my humble view is that this is not the case we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose," he said.

The bill is likely to face legal challenges even if it is signed into law, hindering its impact on the Supreme Court, and is facing pushback because it doesn’t include an exception for rape and incest.

State Rep. Terri Collins, a Republican, who sponsored the bill, told The Washington Postthat although she has sympathy for survivors and agrees “that rape and incest could be an exception in state law,” she has purposefully crafted the bill with a hard-line stance on abortion in hopes that it will make its way to the Supreme Court.

“What I’m trying to do here is get this case in front of the Supreme Court so Roe v. Wade can be overturned,” she said. (Alabama has gone "too far" with "extreme: abortion pill, Marion Gordn "Pat" Robertson says.)

Memorandum to Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson, an “ordained” but no longer functioning “minister” of the Baptist sect of Protestantism who is a bit too “charismatic” for the tastes of those who adhere to heretical Baptist sect: It is not “extreme” to ban all abortions, whether chemical or surgical, without any reservations, qualifications and exceptions. It is not “extreme” to punish wanton killers of the innocent, most of whom make lots and lots of blood money from their wretched trade of dismembering and/or poisoning innocent babies, with long prison terms and, as noted above, even death.

Perhaps Pope Pius XI was “extreme” when he wrote the following in Casti Connubii, December 31, 1939:

Those who hold the reins of government should not forget that it is the duty of public authority by appropriate laws and sanctions to defend the lives of the innocent, and this all the more so since those whose lives are endangered and assailed cannot defend themselves. Among whom we must mention in the first place infants hidden in the mother's womb. And if the public magistrates not only do not defend them, but by their laws and ordinances betray them to death at the hands of doctors or of others, let them remember that God is the Judge and Avenger of innocent blood which cried from earth to Heaven. (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930.) 

Is that “extreme,” Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson?

Marion Gordon "Pat"Robertson's Support for the Red Chinese Population Control Program 

This is nothing new, however, for Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson, who as early as 1996 said that he support the “one-child per family” policy of the Chicoms, something that it reiterated in a very utilitarian and relativistic manner five years later:

The religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told a CNN interviewer on Monday that the United States should not interfere with population-control policies in China, but yesterday, sounding a note of regret, he said he should have emphasized his anti-abortion views.

In a statement about the comments he made on the CNN program ''Wolf Blitzer Reports,'' Mr. Robertson said, ''I regret that my unrehearsed comments on 'Wolf Blitzer' were not spoken with sufficient clarity to communicate my lifelong opposition to voluntary and forced abortion as a means of population control.''

In the interview, Mr. Blitzer had asked Mr. Robertson how he reconciled his support for close relations with China with complaints by conservatives that China was promoting ''so-called forced abortions.''

Mr. Robertson said he would not agree with such a policy. ''But at the same time, they've got 1.2 billion people, and they don't know what to do,'' Mr. Robertson said. ''If every family over there was allowed to have three or four children, the population would become completely unsustainable.''

After saying China risked political upheaval if unemployment made its population restive, Mr. Robertson said: ''So, I think that right now they're doing what they have to do. I don't agree with forced abortion, but I don't think the United States needs to interfere with what they're doing internally in this regard.''

A moment later, Mr. Robertson seemed to contradict himself. Asked whether conservatives might accuse him of ''justifying abortions in China,'' Mr. Robertson said, ''Well, I just think they need to get involved in what's happening.''

Gary L. Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate who is president of the conservative organization American Values, said he welcomed Mr. Robertson's statement yesterday.

''The original statement was so shocking and depressing that I'm gratified that he has clarified it,'' Mr. Bauer said. ''But the fact remains that a number of people that ought to know better, including some good American capitalists and too many conservative leaders, have been willing to make excuses for reprehensible behavior by Beijing.''

In the CNN interview, Mr. Robertson also said that the Chinese were courting ''a demographic catastrophe'' by selecting female infants ''for the slaughter, and they're allowing only males to be born.''

Mr. Robertson said Chinese men would eventually ''have to be importing wives'' from outside China.

A spokeswoman at Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network said he was traveling yesterday and unavailable for further comment.

While officials at some organizations opposed to abortion declined to comment on Mr. Robertson's remarks, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said, ''It is a caution that we need to be very careful and very precise, lest we leave the wrong impression.''

Mr. Land added that he was delighted that Mr. Robertson ''has clarified and re-emphasized his historic position of being strongly pro-life.'' (Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson supports the Red Chinese one child per family program.)

According to what Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson would have us believe, the graces won by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross during His Passion and Death on Good Friday are not efficacious enough to "sustain" an alleged crisis of overpopulation. The logic of Robertson's argument is such as to lead the conclusion that God's Holy Providence and His very Omnipotence are thus "inadequate" to provide for various circumstances, which mean that God has left man to fend for himself and has given unto rational creatures the authority to excuse themselves from the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. To call to mind a phrase used by a friend of ours, Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is a "jerk."

Although I wondered aloud in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos in 1996 whether “Pat” Robertson had a financial stake in Red China that might serve as an incentive for him to back the Chicoms’ monstrous “population control” policies, there is now no longer any need to speculate as the proof of the billionaire Robertson’s investments in Red China was confirmed in a United States Security and Exchange Commission filing in 2001, which demonstrated that Robertson was the chairman of a Red Chinese-based internet search company, Zhaodaola Limited:

Dr. M. G. "Pat" Robertson,  age 71, has served as Chairman of the Board of the Company  since  December  10,  1999.  He serves for a three year term and until his  successor  is  duly  elected  and  qualified.  Dr.  Robertson  is an internationally  known  religious   broadcaster,   businessman,   educator,  and philanthropist  and former  candidate for the  presidential  nomination  for the

Republican  Party.  He has  served as  Chairman  of the  Board of The  Christian Broadcasting Network,  Inc. ("CBN"), a global Christian ministry,  since January 1960, Chief Executive  Officer and President of CBN from January 1960 to January 1987 and from January 1990 to September 1993, and Chief Executive Officer of CBN from  September  1993.  Dr.  Robertson served as the Chairman  and  controlling shareholder of International Family Entertainment, Inc., the owner of The Family Channel cable  television  network,  from 1989 until its sale to a subsidiary of News Corporation in 1997. Currently, Dr. Robertson is also Chairman of Zhaodaola Limited, Freedom Gold, Ltd., and CENCO Refining Company and in addition to his role at CBN, serves in the nonprofit world as Chancellor of Regent University, Chairman of Operation Blessing  International  Relief  and  Development,  and President of the American Center for Law and Justice. (htt2001 Security and Exchange Commissoin Filing.)

Yes, one certainly can’t let monstrously immoral policies devised and enforced by Communist butchers get in the way good, old-fashioned Judeo-Calvinist capitalism, especially when billions of dollars in Robertson Asset Management are at stake.

Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson is a fraud. Then again, so is Ronna McDaniel (see Ronna McDaniel says Alabama abortion law should have more exceptions ), the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who says that she opposes parts of Alabama’s almost total ban on all abortions in the Heart of Dixie/Yellowhammer/Cotton state as her collection of naturalists has no “litmus test” on abortion while calling it a “party life” (go figure that one out), but that is another matter that will go without further commentary as this website has featured hundreds of articles documenting the utter worthlessness of the careerists in the Republican National Committee.

Protestantism and Contraception

On the other hand, of course, it is important to remember that Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson is a faithful Protestant, which means that he makes things up as the need arises for him to do so, something that he shares with the Modernists who have been posing as the “leaders” of the Catholic Church since the Rosicrucian named Angelo Roncalli stepped out on the balcony of the Basilica of Saint Peter on October 28, 1958, the Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, and proclaimed himself to be “Pope John XXIII.” Every single bit of Protestantism is based upon a rejection of the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church, and thus it is that every single Protestant is immersed in theological and moral relativism from beginning to end without fail.

Indeed, the proto-Protestant, Martin Luther, began his diabolically-inspired revolution to justify divorce and remarriage, thereby rejecting the absolute indissolubility of a ratified and consummated marriage and thus making a mockery of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s own teaching, contained in the very words of Sacred Scripture that Luther claimed were the only source of Divine Revelation, and of Saint John the Baptist’s martyrdom at the hands of Herod the Tetrach for his defense of marital indissolubility until the death of one of the spouses. Protestants have been in the vanguard of “lowering the bar” of indissolubility and fecundity of marriage from that point until the present time. The systematic attack on all of the vestiges of Christendom in Europe began with Martin Luther’s and Henry VIII’s embrace of divorce and “remarriage” in the Sixteenth Century and spread over the course of time to the denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage. It was the very false church created by King Henry Tudor in 1534 that endorsed contraception at its Lambeth Conference in 1930 the Anglicans gave Margaret Sanger’s “family limitation” program a supposedly “Christian” justification that was seized upon by many with results that are still unfolding before our very eyes.

Here is the text of Resolution 15 of the 1930 Lambeth Conference

Resolution 15

The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. (Resolution 15 - The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage.)

This decision opened the floodgates of Protestant acceptance of contraception, which, of course, had been promoted for the previous fifteen years by the nymphomaniac revolutionary anti-Theist named Margaret Sanger. An organization known as the Federal Council of Churches in America (which merged in 1950 with other such organizations to form the “National Council of Churches”) endorsed contraception in 1931, prompting the following editorial to appear, amazingly enough, in The Washington Post:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on "marriage and the home," which has now submitted a report favoring a "careful and restrained" use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.

The mischief that would result from an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for "regulating the size of families" is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and 'scientific' propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. ("Forgetting Religion," Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1932.)

Leaving the institutional amnesia of The Washington Post aside, its 1932 editorial was quite prophetic in explaining that the widespread use of contraceptives would “lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality” and even the “scientific” production of human souls, which we see by means of “in vitro fertilization” and the other monstrous experiments that are being conducted by mad scientists around the world at this time, including in Red China and here in the United States of America. The acceptance of contraception led inevitably to the acceptance of surgical abortion-on-demand as it is easy to dehumanize and kill off a baby whose conception was not “planned.” Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson will never admit that this is so as he is completely blinded by his own theological and political “infallibility” as he counts the loot he rakes in from the corporations managed by Robertson Asset Management.

Worse than Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson: The Conciliar "Bishops"

Sadly but ever so predictably, several of the conciliar “bishops” of the United States of America themselves have actively opposed efforts by various state legislatures to retard surgical baby-killing in the United States of America as being “imprudent” and likely to backfire. The conciliar “bishops” of Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee, while did so earlier this year as they opposed the Volunteer State’s “heartbeat bill” that would ban the killing of the innocent preborn once a baby’s heartbeat had been detected:

We believe that the sanctity of human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception to natural death.  So while we wholeheartedly support the intention of the “Heartbeat Bill” being considered by the Tennessee Legislature, we must also be prudent in how we combat the pro-abortion evil that dwells in our society.  

The “Heartbeat Bill” has been passed in various forms across the country and has been consistently struck down by state and federal courts alike for being unconstitutional.  In these legal cases, a victory is handed to the pro-abortion plaintiffs and we must remember that every pro-abortion victory in the courts further strengthens the Roe v. Wade precedent and makes Roe that much more difficult to overturn.  Furthermore, states that defend their own “Heartbeat Bills” must pay attorney’s fees to Planned Parenthood when Planned Parenthood sues that state and wins in court.  North Dakota is reported as being court ordered to pay $241,000 in attorney’s fees to Planned Parenthood.  Similarly, Arkansas was ordered to pay $121,689 in attorney’s fees to the pro-abortion plaintiffs when Arkansas lost its case.   

Given the field of legal realities that we must consider, we believe it would not be prudent to support the “Heartbeat Bill” knowing the certainty of its overturning when challenged, in addition to the court ordered fees that would be paid to the pro-abortion plaintiffs.  Instances like these remind us that we must be prudent and support other pro-life pieces of pro-life legislation that stand a better chance of being upheld in the courts and, possibly, become the vehicle that forces the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe once and for all. 

Given the unjust laws recently signed in New York and considered in Virginia, we pray urgent support will be given to the “Human Life Protection Act” being considered within the Legislature that would automatically ban abortions in Tennessee should the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision be overturned.  (Tennessee "Bishops" Issue Joint Statement on Heartbeat Bill.)

In other words, despite all the flowery talk about supporting the sanctity of life, the conciliar “bishops” of Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee, opposed a bill that would ban at least some abortions on grounds that are thoroughly rational while supporting a “Human Life Protection Act” that would become effective only if the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned Roe v. Wade. This begs the following question: How, then, would the Supreme Court justices get to reverse Roe v. Wade if a test case represented by the Tennessee (and the just signed into law—by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, no less—Louisiana “heartbeat bill”) and Alabama laws do not come before it? Moreover, when would the symbolic “Human Life Protection Act” even take effect if a majority of the justices on the high court as presently constituted vote, as it likely, to sustain Roe v. Wade?

How long will be before Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s American mouthpiece, Blase Cupich, comes out against Alabama’s near-total ban on the surgical execution of children even? Time will tell.

What we do know, however, is that, despite all their “pro-life” rhetoric, many of the American “bishops” have been giving a wink and a nod to contraception—and even surgical baby-killing by linking opposition to it with opposition to the death penalty and support for open borders, statist schemes of income redistribution and “climate control”—ever since Francis Cardinal Spellman and Richard Cardinal Cushing carried John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s water for him in 1960:

In 1960, the Puerto Rico hierarchy decided to make one last concerted effort to drive the Sangerite forces from the island. The Catholic resistance was led by two American Bishops--James F. Davis of San Juan and James E. McManus of Ponce. The Catholic Church in Puerto Rico helped to organize a national political party--the Christian Action Party (CAP). The new political front was composed primarily of Catholic laymen and its platform included opposition to existing permissive legislation on birth control and sterilization.

When increasing numbers of CAP flags began to fly from the rooftops of Puerto Rico's Catholic homes, the leaders of the opposition parties, who favored turning Puerto Rico into an international Sangerite playground for massive U.S.-based contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization experimental programs, became increasingly concerned for their own political futures. Then unexpected help arrived in the unlikely person of His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.

One month before the hotly contested national election, Spellman arrived in Puerto Rico ostensibly to preside over two formal Church functions. While on the island, Spellman agreed to meet with CAP's major political rival, Governor Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and a supporter of federal population control programs for Puerto Rico.

In an interview that followed his meeting with Munoz, Spellman, known for years as FDR's errand boy with a miter, claimed that politics were outside his purview. The cardinal's statement was interpreted by the press as an indictment of the partisan politics of Bishops Davis and McManus. To underscore his message, as soon as Spellman returned to the States he made a public statement in opposition to the latest directives of the Puerto Rico bishops prohibiting Catholics from voting for Munoz and his anti-life PDP cohorts. Catholic voters in Puerto Rico should vote their conscience without the threat of Church penalties, Spellman said.

Boston's Cardinal Cushing, John F. Kennedy's "political godfather," joined Spellman in expressed "feigned horror" at the thought of ecclesiastical authority attempting to dictate political voting. "This has never been a part of our history, and I pray God that it will never be!" said Cushing. Cushing's main concern was not the Puerto Rican people. His main worry was that the flack caused by the Puerto Rican birth control affair might overflow into the upcoming presidential campaign and hurt John Kennedy's bid for the White House.

The national election turned out to be a political disaster for CAP. Munoz and the PDP won by a landslide. Bishop Davis was forced to end the tragic state of confusion among the Catholic laity by declaring just before the election that no penalties would be imposed on those who voted for PDP.  

Two years later, with the knowledge and approval of the American hierarchy and the Holy See, the Puerto Rican hierarchy was pressured into singing a secret concordat of "non-interference" in government-sponsored birth control programs--a sop being that the programs would now include instruction in the "rhythm method." While insisting on their right to hold and express legitimate opposition to such programs, the Puerto Rican bishops promised they would "never impose their own moral doctrines upon individuals who do not accept the Catholic teaching."

When the Sangerite storm hit the mainland in the late 1960s, AmChurch would echo this same theme song, opening the floodgates to a multi-billion dollar federal-life-prevention (and destruction) program. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 647-649)

It was five years after this travesty that “Cardinal” Cushing told a Boston radio station that he could not interfere with the “consciences” of state legislators as they considered whether to support or to oppose a bill in the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). This made it far easier for the Kennedys and the Careys and Cuomos and the Bidens and the O’Neills and the Pelosis and the Durbins, among so very  many others, to support the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn in the 1970s with the full support of the ultra-progressives in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, one of whose leaders, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, another true bishop, invented the “consistent ethic of life” (“the seamless garment) slogan to provide pro-abortion Catholics with the cover of “respectability” as long as they opposed the death penalty and supported one statist measure after another to confiscate wealth and then to redistribute it to the poor while “empowering” illegal immigrants at the same time:

Early in the summer of 1965, the Massachusetts legislature took up a proposal to repeal the state's Birth Control law, which barred the use of contraceptives. (As a matter of historical interest, the repeal effort was sponsored by a young state representative named Michael Dukakis, who would be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US presidency 23 years later.) In a state where Catholics constituted a voting majority, and dominated the legislature, the prospects for repeal appeared remote. Then on June 22, Cardinal Cushing appeared on a local radio program, "An Afternoon with Haywood Vincent,” and effectively scuttled the opposition.

Cardinal Cushing announced:

“My position in this matter is that birth control in accordance with artificial means is immoral, and not permissible. But this is Catholic teaching. I am also convinced that I should not impose my position—moral beliefs or religious beliefs—upon those of other faiths.”

Warming to the subject, the cardinal told his radio audience that "I could not in conscience approve the legislation" that had been proposed. However, he quickly added, "I will make no effort to impose my opinion upon others."

So there it was: the "personally opposed" argument, in fully developed form, enunciated by a Prince of the Church nearly 40 years ago! Notice how the unvarying teaching of the Catholic Church, which condemned artificial contraception as an offense against natural law, is reduced here to a matter of the cardinal's personal belief. And notice how he makes no effort to persuade legislators with the force of his arguments; any such effort is condemned in advance as a bid to "impose" his opinion.

Cardinal Cushing conceded that in the past, Catholic leaders had opposed any effort to alter the Birth Control law. "But my thinking has changed on that matter," he reported, "for the simple reason that I do not see where I have an obligation to impose my religious beliefs on people who just do not accept the same faith as I do."

(Notice that the Catholic position is reduced still further here, to a matter of purely sectarian belief—as if it would be impossible for a non-Catholic to support the purpose of the Birth Control law. The cardinal did not explain why that law was enacted in 1899 by the heirs of the Puritans in Massachusetts, long before Catholics came to power in the legislature.)

Before the end of his fateful radio broadcast, Cardinal Cushing gave his advice to the Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature: "If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it. You represent them. You don't represent the Catholic Church."

Dozens of Catholic legislators did vote for the bill, and the Birth Control law was abolished. Perhaps more important in the long run, the "personally opposed" politician had his rationale. (Cushing's Use of The "Personally Opposed" Argument.)

Today’s Modernists had lots and lots of help from true bishops and true priests in the 1960s and 1970s as their consciences were massaged to make it possible for them to support each of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.

It is no accident that the “peace and justice” crowd at the now-named United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose work had been “divided,” so they say, in 1966 between the so-called National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference, associated with one pro-abortion and pro-sodomite group after another, many of which received funding from both Catholic Charities and the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development (see the following two news stories of the past decade, although like examples abound today all around the world: Signs of Apostasy Abound and Randy Engel on Catholic Relief Services.)

The contemporary American exemplars of the late Joseph Bernardin’s “peace and justice” crowd are, of course, having their day now as one of their very own, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, helps to soothe their consciences by saying not a word in opposition to a child-killing bill then pending in Brazil during his visit there in July of 2013 and refusing to say anything in opposition to a “gay marriage” bill in France or to a bill that legalized after-birth child killing up to the age of eighteen in Belgium five years ago (see Hitler Prevails After All). Ah, but that was simply  a prelude to the prefabricated results expressed in Amoris Laetitia, March 19, 2016, to make it possible to those living in sinful relationships be permitted to receive what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service. After all, pro-contraception, pro-abortion and pro-“gay rights” Catholics have had unfettered access to what is believed to be the Most Blessed Sacrament these past fifty-four years since Griswold v. Connecticut was decided.

There is a perfect logic, therefore, to soothing the consciences of Catholics living in sinful relationships by Modernists as has been the case with many “mainline” Protestants, whether natural or unnatural in character, as the “peace and justice” crowd has always been about indemnification of personal sin while hiding behind the black robes of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America (“the law is the law”) and/or a self-righteous and morally indignant claim to the moral high ground by supporting statist programs for the “poor,” including universal health care coverage, that are premised upon recipients having full access to taxpayer-subsidized “family planning” programs. Personal sin does not matter to Jorge and his fellow revolutionaries as only “social sins” against a false concept of “charity” matters. Nothing else.

There is a common bond that ties Judeo-Masonic naturalists, many Protestants, albeit the alliances vary according to the issues involved, and the Modernists, and that common bond is a rejection of any concept of absolute truth that cannot be “finessed” or “nuanced” according to situations, circumstances and the personal motives of those who prefer to commit what are sinful acts in the objective order of thing rather than face the fact that they deserve hell for their lives of perdition.

The conciliar American “bishops” of the United States of America have done next-to-nothing to oppose the chemical and surgical destruction of innocent preborn lives as succumbing to the prevailing ethos of popular sentiment is something that they inherited from many, although not all, of the Catholic bishops of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries who paved the way for Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965 Although many previous commentaries have dealt with this ethos, part two of this two-part series will do so yet again to provide a bit of historical background as to why we are consigned to always argue about the inarguable, including Catholic doctrine and moral theology.

On the Fourth Sunday after Easter and the Commemoration of Pope St. Peter Celestine

The joy of Pentecost Sunday is but three weeks away, and Holy Mother Church turns our attention today, the Fourth Sunday after Easter and the Commemorations of Pope Saint Peter Celestine and of Saint Pudentiana, to the descent of the Advocate, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ promised to the Apostles at the Last Supper. Today's Divine Office contains readings from Saint Augustine of Hippo on the meaning of the Gospel passage read in Holy Mass today:

The Lord Jesus told His disciples what things they should suffer after that He was gone away from them, and then He said: "These things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you; but now I go My way to Him That sent Me." Let us first see whether it had been that He had not told them before this what they were to suffer in time coming. That He had done so amply before the night of the last Supper, is testified by the three first Evangelists, but it was when that Supper was ended that, according to John, He said: "These things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you."

Are we then to try and loose the knot of this difficulty by asserting that, according to these three Evangelists, it was on the eve of the Passion, albeit before the Supper, that He had said these things unto them, and therefore not at the beginning, when He was with them, but when He was about to leave them, and go His way to the Father And in this way we might reconcile the truthfulness of what this Evangelist saith here "These things I said not unto you at the beginning" with the truthfulness of the! other three. But this explanation is rendered impossible by the Gospel according to Matthew, who telleth us how that the Lord spake to His Apostles concerning their sufferings to come, not only when He was on the point of eating the Passover with them, but at the very beginning, when the names of the twelve are first given, and they were sent forth to do the work of God. Matth. x. 17-42.

It would seem then that when He said: "These things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you," He meant by "these things," not the sufferings which they were to bear for His sake, but His promise of the Comforter Who should come to them, and testify while they suffered, xv. 26, 27. This Comforter then, or Advocate, (for the Greek word "Parakletos" will bear either interpretation,) would be needful to them when they saw Christ no more, and therefore it was that Christ spoke not of Him "at the beginning" (of the Gospel Dispensation) while He Himself "was with" His disciples, because His visible Presence was then their sufficient comfort. (Matins, The Divine Office, Fourth Sunday after Easter.)

It behooves to spend the last four weeks of Paschaltide, which ends on Whit Saturday, an Ember Day, June 15, 2019, to meditate upon the gift of God the Holy Ghost, who has always guided Holy Mother Church infallibly to preserve her from even, to call to mind the words of Pope Gregory XVI in Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834, a "light tarnish of error:"

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

This is yet another rebuke to those who contend that Holy Mother Church does not teach the truth infallibly at all times and that it is incapable of her to be associaed in any way with the slighest tarnish of error.

Although the Feast of Peter Celestine is downgraded to a commemoration (along with that of Saint Pudentiana) and his hagiography is not read at Matins this year, the readings appointed for the last true pope to have resigned from the See of Saint Peter contains a remarkable rebuke to those who contend that there cannot be a long absence of a true Pope on the Throne of Saint Peter:

This Peter, who is called Peter Celestine, because when he became Pope he did so under the title of Celestine V, was the son of respectable Catholic parents, and was born at Isernia in Apulia, about the year of grace 1221. He was hardly entered on boyhood, when he withdrew into a desert, in order to keep his soul safe from the snares of the world. In solitude he fed his mind with heavenly meditation, and brought his body into subjection, even by wearing an iron chain next to his bare flesh. He founded, under the Rule of St. Benedict, that congregation which was afterwards known as the Celestine. His light, as of a candle set upon a candlestick, could not be kept hidden, and after the Church of Rome had for a long while been widowed of a shepherd, he was chosen without his knowledge and in his absence, to fill the chair of Peter. The news of his election filled himself with as great amazement, as it did all others with sudden joy. When, however, he was seated in the exalted place of the Papal dignity, he found that the many cares by which he was beset made it well-nigh impossible for him to give himself to his accustomed meditations after four months, of his own free will he resigned the burden and the honour together (on the 13th day of December, 1294); and, while he sought to return to his old way of life, on the 19th day of May, 1296, he fell asleep in the Lord. How precious his death was in His sight was gloriously manifested by a Cross which appeared shining in the air before the door of the cell. He was illustrious for miracles both during his life and after his death, and when these had been duly investigated, Clement V., in the eleventh year after his departure hence, enrolled his name among those of the Saints. (Matins, Feast of Saint Peter Celestine.)

While it is true that thirty months is not the same as sixty and one-half years, we should call to mind the following words written by the late Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., concerning the possibility of a “super long” vacancy in the See of Saint Peter:

November 30, 2002

Dear Correspondent:

You quote the passage from Vatican Council I, Session IV, which states clearly that St. Peter, the first pope, has “perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church…”

You, understandably,  wonder how it could be that there are still “perpetual successors” of St. Peter if the men who have claimed to be popes in our times have been in reality public heretics, who therefore could not, as heretics, be the true successors of St. Peter.

The important thing here to understand just what kind of “perpetual succession” in the papacy Our Lord established.

Did Our Lord intend that there should be a pope on the Chair of Peter every single moment of the Church’s existence and every single moment of the papacy existence?

You will immediately realize that, no, Our Lord very obviously did not establish that kind of “perpetual succession” of popes.  You know that, all through the centuries of the Church’s existence, popes have been dying and that there then followed an interval, after the death of each pope, when there was no “perpetual successor,” no pope, occupying the Chair of Peter.  That Chair became vacant for a while whenever a pope died.  This has happened more than 260 times since the death of the first pope.

But you also know that the death of a pope did not mean the end of the “perpetual succession” of popes after Peter.

You understand now that “no pope” does not mean “no papacy.”  A vacant Chair of Peter after the death of a pope does not mean a permanent vacancy of that Chair.  A temporary vacancy of the Chair of Peter does not mean the end of the “perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church.” 

Even though Our Lord, had He so willed it, could have seen to it that, the moment one pope died, another man would automatically succeed him as pope, He nevertheless did not do it that way.

Our Lord did it the way we have always known it to be, that is, He allowed for an interval, or interruption, of undesignated duration, to follow upon the death of each pope.

That interruption of succession of popes has, most of the time, lasted several weeks, or a month or so, but there have been times when the interruption lasted longer than that, considerably longer.

Our Lord did not specify just how long that interruption was allowed to last before a new pope was to be elected.  And He did not declare that, if the delay in electing a new pope lasted too long, the “perpetual succession” was then terminated, so that it would then have to be said that “the papacy is no more.”

Nor did the Church ever specify the length or duration of the vacancy of the Chair of Peter to be allowed after the death of a pope.

So it is clear that the present vacancy of the Chair of Peter, brought on by public heresy, despite the fact that it has lasted some 40 years or so, does not mean that the “perpetual succession” of popes after St. Peter has come to an end.

 What we must realize here is that the papacy, and with it the “perpetual succession” of popes is a Divine institution, not a human institution. Therefore, man cannot put an end to the papacy, no matter how long God may allow heresy to prevail at the papal headquarters in Rome.

Only God could, if He so willed, terminate the papacy.  But He willed not do so, because He has made His will known to His Church that there will be “perpetual successors” in the papal primacy that was first entrusted to St. Peter.

We naturally feel distressed that the vacancy of the Chair of Peter has lasted so long, and we are unable to see the end of that vacancy in sight.  But we do realize that the restoration of the Catholic Faith, and with it the return of a true Catholic Pope to the Papal Chair, will come when God wills it and in the way He wills it.

If it seems to us, as of now, that there are no qualified, genuinely Catholic electors, who could elect a new and truly Catholic Pope.  God can, for example, bring about the conversion of enough Cardinals to the traditional Catholic Faith, who would then proceed to elect a new Catholic Pope.

God can intervene in whatever way it may please Him, in order to restore everything as He originally willed it to be in His Holy Church.

Nothing is impossible with God. Father Martin Stépanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.

March 25, 2003

Dear Faithful Catholic:

Your letter of February 21, 2003, tells me about “doubting Thomases” who say that they “just can’t believe” that the Chair of Peter could have been vacant for as much as 40 years, or even for only 25 years, without the “perpetual succession” of popes being thereby permanently broken.

Those “doubting Thomases” presumably grant that the “perpetual succession” of popes remains unbroken during the relatively short intervals that follow upon the deaths of popes, and you indicate that, at least for a while, they have even understood – to their credit – that a public and unrepentant heretic cannot possibly be a true Catholic Pope and that the Chair of St. Peter must necessarily become vacant if it is taken over by such a public heretic.

But, as you sadly say, those “doubting Thomases” changed their views after they read the Declaration of Ecumenical Council Vatican I (1870) which you quoted from Denzinger in your letter of November 8, 2002.  Vatican I declared that “the Blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the Universal Church…”

Notice carefully that Vatican I says nothing more than that St. Peter shall have “perpetual successors” in the primacy, which obviously means that the “perpetual succession” of popes will last until the end of time.

Vatican I says nothing about how long Peter’s Chair may be vacant before the “perpetual succession” of popes would supposedly come to a final end.  Yet the “doubting Thomases” imagine they see in the Vatican I declaration something which just isn’t there.  They presume to think that “perpetual successors in the primacy” means that there can never be an extra long vacancy of Peter’s Chair, but only those short vacancies that we have always known to occur after the deaths of popes.  But that isn’t the teaching of Vatican I.  It is the mistaken “teaching” of “doubting Thomases.”

Curiously enough, the “doubting Thomases” never suggest just how long a vacancy of Peter’s Chair would be needed to put a supposedly final end to the “perpetual succession” of popes.  Their imagination has gotten them into an impossible situation.  They “just can’t believe” that the vacancy of Peter’s Chair could last for 25 or 40 years or more, while, at the same time, they “just can’t believe” that a public heretic could possibly be a true Catholic Pope.  At one and the same time, they do have a Pope, yet they do not have a Pope.  They have a heretic “Pope,” but they do not have a true Catholic Pope.

Not being able to convince the “doubting Thomases” that they are all wrong and badly confused, you have hoped that some unknown “Church teaching” could be found in some book that would make the “doubting Thomases” see the light.

But you don’t need any additional “Church teaching” besides what you have already quoted from Vatican I.  You can plainly see that Vatican I did not say anything about how long a vacancy of Peter’s Chair may be.  You also know that Our Lord never said that the vacancy of the Papal Chair may last only so long and no longer.

Most important of all, never forget that men cannot put an end to the “perpetual succession” of popes, no matter how long public heretics may occupy Peter’s Chair.  The Catholic Papacy comes from God, not from man.  To put an end to the “perpetual succession” of popes, you would first have to put an end to God Himself. Father Martin Stépanich, O.F.M., S.T.D. An Objection to Sedevacantism: 'Perpetual Successors' to Peter (For another Father Stepanich letter, one that summarizes the sedevacantist case so very clearly, see: Father Stepanich Letter on Sedevacantism.)

The anti-sedevacantist effort to use Pastor Aeternus in an attempt to prove sedevacantism to be fallacious was dissected in a post on Novus Ordo Watch Wire in 2016:

Now, certainly, we are required by our holy Catholic Faith to believe that the Church will endure until the end of time (see Salaverri, On the Church of Christ, nn. 288, 294ff.). She was founded by God as a perpetual institution for the salvation of men. But just as she cannot cease to exist, neither can she fail. This latter consideration alone disqualifies the Novus Ordo Sect from being the Catholic Church because it does not teach the true Faith, and, especially on account of its invalid pseudo-sacraments, it does not sanctify souls. It is simply not the ark of salvation.

Sedevacantists do not hold that the Catholic Church has ceased to exist or even — unless perhaps the end of the world should be imminent — that the papal succession has ended. Rather, the succession of Popes has been interrupted, even if for an unusually long time. It will continue whenever the God whose Providence governs all things, wills it to.

How will the papal succession resume? We do not know for sure; but this is what distinguishes genuine Catholic Faith from the pseudo-faith of heretics: The Catholic has genuine divine Faith in God and His promises and therefore is not in need of having all the answers: “Faith … must exclude not only all doubt, but all desire for demonstration” (Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part I, Article I; italics added).

People who are quick to argue that “God would never allow such a lengthy interregnum!” should realize that what we know God will never allow is for the Papacy to fail. That is what can never happen. But the Papacy does not fail by there not being a Pope for a time; it would fail by someone like Francis being Pope, as we demonstrate in this article and in this video. We have to remember that no Pope does not mean no Papacy. The only way one can affirm as true Vatican I’s teaching about the Papacy is to hold that Jorge Bergoglio is not the Pope.

In 1892 — 22 years after the First Vatican Council’s dogma regarding perpetual successors — the Jesuit Fr. Edmund James O’Reilly published a book entitled The Relations of the Church to Society (download free here or purchase here). In this work, he touched upon the question of an extended interregnum and how it would relate to the perpetuity of the Church and the promises of Christ:

The great schism of the West [1378-1417] suggests to me a reflection which I take the liberty of expressing here. If this schism had not occurred, the hypothesis of such a thing happening would appear to many chimerical. They would say it could not be; God would not permit the Church to come into so unhappy a situation. Heresies might spring up and spread and last painfully long, through the fault and to the perdition of their authors and abettors, to the great distress too of the faithful, increased by actual persecution in many places where the heretics were dominant. But that the true Church should remain between thirty and forty years without a thoroughly ascertained Head, and representative of Christ on earth, this would not be. Yet it has been; and we have no guarantee that it will not be again, though we may fervently hope otherwise. What I would infer is, that we must not be too ready to pronounce on what God may permit. We know with absolute certainty that He will fulfil His promises; not allow anything to occur at variance with them; that He will sustain His Church and enable her to triumph over all enemies and difficulties; that He will give to each of the faithful those graces which are needed for each one’s service of Him and attainment of salvation, as He did during the great schism we have been considering, and in all the sufferings and trials which the Church has passed through from the beginning. We may also trust He will do a great deal more than what He has bound Himself to by His promises. We may look forward with a cheering probability to exemption for the future from some of the troubles and misfortunes that have befallen in the past. But we, or our successors in future generations of Christians, shall perhaps see stranger evils than have yet been experienced, even before the immediate approach of that great winding up of all things on earth that will precede the day of judgment. I am not setting up for a prophet, nor pretending to see unhappy wonders, of which I have no knowledge whatever. All I mean to convey is that contingencies regarding the Church, not excluded by the Divine promises, cannot be regarded as practically impossible, just because they would be terrible and distressing in a very high degree.

(Rev. Edmund J. O’Reilly, The Relations of the Church to Society[London: John Hodges, 1892], pp. 287-288; underlining added.)

Nothing more needs to be added to this — Fr. O’Reilly has hit the nail on the head. In fact, a few pages earlier, he specifically states that even if during the Western Schism none of the three papal claimants had been the true Pope and the Chair of St. Peter had been vacant all that time, this too would not have been contrary to the promises of Christ:

We may here stop to inquire what is to be said of the position, at that time, of the three claimants, and their rights with regard to the Papacy. In the first place, there was all through, from the death of Gregory XI in 1378, a Pope — with the exception, of course, of the intervals between deaths and elections to fill up the vacancies thereby created. There was, I say, at every given time a Pope, really invested with the dignity of Vicar of Christ and Head of the Church, whatever opinions might exist among many as to his genuineness; not that an interregnum covering the whole period would have been impossible or inconsistent with the promises of Christ, for this is by no means manifest, but that, as a matter of fact, there was not such an interregnum. (O’Reilly, The Relations of the Church to Society, p. 283; underlining added.)

Thus we see that the frightful situation Holy Mother Church is in today, while certainly distressing and extraordinary, is simply not impossible and not contrary to the teaching of the First Vatican Council. (The Perpetual Successors Objection.)

We are indeed eyewitnesses to the “stranger evils” discussed by Father Edmund O’Reilly in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century.

Our Lord wants us to persevere in the true Faith as we continue to make efforts to reform our lives  and to make reparation for our own many sins by cooperating with the ineffable graces He won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. He offers to make us sharers in His Easter victory over the power of sin and eternal death if we persevere until the end in a state of Sanctifying Grace as members of His Catholic Church: 

[32] But call to mind the former days, wherein, being illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions. [33] And on the one hand indeed, by reproaches and tribulations, were made a gazingstock; and on the other, became companions of them that were used in such sort. [34] For you both had compassion on them that were in bands, and took with joy the being stripped of your own goods, knowing that you have a better and a lasting substance. [35] Do not therefore lose your confidence, which hath a great reward.

[36] For patience is necessary for you; that, doing the will of God, you may receive the promise. [37] For yet a little and a very little while, and he that is to come, will come, and will not delay. [38] But my just man liveth by faith; but if he withdraw himself, he shall not please my soul. [39] But we are not the children of withdrawing unto perdition, but of faith to the saving of the soul. (Hebrews 10: 32-39.) 

Are we willing to suffer reproaches from our relations and friends now for our embrace of the truth of our ecclesiastical situation as we make no concessions to concilairism or the officials of its false church?

Are we willing to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits to maintain our confidence that God does not indeed reward those who are patient in their sufferings for the cause of truth, that He will come to rescue them without delay?

May it be that we will be found not as "the children of withdrawing unto perdition, but of faith to the saving of the soul" as we live always as the consecrated slaves of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, she who is our Immaculate Queen.

Let us continue to celebrate Our Lord's Easter Victory over the power of sin and eternal death this Easter season will be but a foretaste of the eternal glories reserved for those who bear their fair share of hardship which the Gospel entails with patience and gratitude and love.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us. 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Pope Saint Peter Celestine, pray for us.

Saint Pudentiana, pray for us.