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There Is Really Nothing "New" Here, Boys and Girls
May 20, 2024, Introduction
Headlines are being made about a recently released document by the conciliar Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity concerning a “downgrading” of papal primacy in favor of false ecumenism and synodality. Stories written in tone of breathlessness and of disbelief have various people in the resist while recognize movement tearing their garments and gnashing their teeth.
All I can say to this is spare me the drama as there is nothing really “new” here, boys and girls.
Although it will take me a considerable amount of time, perhaps up to two solid weeks, to prepare a detailed analysis of the new document, “The Bishop of Rome,” as the text is long and require me to spent even more time than it took to complete my last two commentaries, I am dusting off material from past commentaries based on Joseph Alois Ratzinger’s view of papal primacy expressed in Principles of Catholic Theology and that received antipapal expression as Benedict XVI in The Ravenna Document, October 13, 2007, issued by the International Theological Commission, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II’s Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, and an address that Walter “Cardinal” Kasper gave to Anglicans on May 24, 2002, to explain that the new document contains nothing substantially “new.” The only thing that is truly new, as such, is the fact that was once discussed in theoretical terms has become a plan for concrete action to make what most people think is the papacy a subordinate entity to the One World Ecumenical Church.
Even in this regard, however, The Bishop of Rome is a case of life imitating art as it was fifty years ago this year that a made-for-television motion picture called “Catholics” aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System television network in 1974 after it had made its debut in the United Kingdom a year earlier.
The film, which billed itself as a fable and is set in time after a fictional Vatican IV, starred Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez (known professionally as Martin Sheen) as an ultra-progressive priest who had been sent by an ultra-progressive pope to an island off of Ireland where a group of “renegade” monks had continued to offer the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, and it featured a shot of Sheen’s character, Father Kinsella, in the lotus position near the beginning of the film as he received a phone call from the superior of his religious community, a scene that has been omitted in the film’s very edited digital version, which goes by the name of “The Conflict.” Also omitted from the edited version of the film is the scene where Kinsella is told by his superior that the pope was under orders from the world council of churches in The Hague to put down the rebel monks in Ireland as their retention of the “old Mass” was threatening an ecumenical confab among the world’s religions that was to take place in Singapore.
“Catholics” was not a fable, of course. It was a commentary on what was happening at the time even though Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was not as well known then as he would become in 1976 when he defied Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI’s direct command not to ordain men to the priesthood for the Society of Saint Pius X in 1976. More significantly, however, the movie’s script made it clear that the fictional pope was subordinate to the world council of religions and that nothing was more important than ecumenism and liberation theology. (Although irrelevant to the point of this commentary, the fictional abbot, played by Trevor Howard, of the monastery where the monks were devoted to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition is an agnostic who does not believe in the Real Presence and who, out of obedience, submits to the “new Mass” at the end of the film.)
Sound familiar?
With this introduction, I hereby present to you the older commentary as I believe that it is a timely review of the facts making it clear that the new document is simply a concretization of the conciliar revolution’s long held plans to do away with all remaining vestiges of Catholicism, including the papacy, in the name of an ecumenical “fellowship” something along the lines of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) where “believers” can agree to disagree in the name of “love” and “brotherhood."
Reprising Material from Other Commentaries
Revolutions are meant by the devil to turn the world upside down.
The Protestant Revolt, for example, so accustomed those who apostatized to its heresies (the rejection of the truths that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded a visible, hierarchical society headed on earth by Saint Peter and his true successors, the belief that one is "saved" when making a "profession of faith" in the Holy Name of Jesus and the subsequent rejection of the Sacrament of Confession and of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament, the denial of the Mass as the unbloody perpetuation of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the Calvinist heresy that human souls are predestined to Heaven or to Hell by an arbitrary God Who denies free will to His rational creatures) and novelties (new "liturgical rites," the abolition of the altar in favor a table for a "supper," new prayers, the revival of the iconoclasm that was fought by Saint John Damascene, hatred of devotion to the Mother of God and the saints) that those who remained faithful to the Catholic Faith as it had been handed down to them over the centuries without an iota of change were viewed as "crazy" or "schismatic" or "disloyal" or even "unpatriotic."
Here is the account in Father Harold Gardiner's book of how Blessed Edmund Campion was paraded through the streets of London following his return to that city after his capture on July 14, 1581, just forty-seven years after King Henry VIII had himself declared Supreme Head of the Church in England and just twenty-three years after Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I, restored England to Protestantism after the five-year reign of her half-sister Queen Mary, the daughter of Henry's true wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon:
When they started their journey through the city--they were paraded from end to end of it--the crowds laughed, and many hissed and booed the prisoners. They rode with their elbows tied behind them, their hands lashed together in front, and their feet secured underneath their horses' bellies. Father Campion was singled out for further ridicule by having a paper pinned to his hat, which read: "Campion the Seditious Jesuit."
As the parade passed a section of London called Cheapside, they trooped before a cross standing in the market place. It had been battered and defaced in the religious troubles, but it was still a cross. Father Campion raised his eyes to it, bowed his head as far as he could and tried to make the sign of the cross on himself with his fettered hands.
Some of the crowd pressing close to see the famous captive booed and jeered.
"The Papist sign won't save you from the cross that waits you on Tyburn, you traitor."
"He'll bow to the stone of the cross, but he won't bend his stiff neck to the Queen."
"Haw, haw, but soon he won't have a head on top of his neck to bow with at all."
Such were some of the hoots and catcalls, but some of the people looked with respect and sympathy, not to mention shame. Was this England, that an accused man could be treated as though he had already been tried and found guilty? Did he have the ghost of a chance to get a fair trial? What would happen to the country if things like this went on? Could England ever again be thought of as part of Christendom if priests and good Catholics were persecuted and put to death just because they were priests and good Catholics?
These thoughts were in many minds, but they remained locked up there because it would have been dangerous to express them. But Father Campion would express them very soon and in a way that gave, even when he was in his last hours, new heart and courage to those he had come to serve.
Yes, England could still be thought of as part of Christendom, so long as other Campions would follow to carry on his work. And they did follow. From Campion's day to this, priests have continued to preach Christ and His Church and lay people have continued to follow. Persecutions and martyrdoms would continue for more than a hundred years, but peace would finally come to the Church in England, and with peace, growth and vigor. (Father Harold C. Gardiner, S.J., Edmund Campion: Hero of God's Underground, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pp. 132-134.)
Unfortunately, however, Father Gardiner's description of the Catholic Church in England became obsolete a short time after his book about Blessed Edmund Campion was published in 1957, a year before the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. A new revolution that celebrates the very schismatic "Church of England" that Blessed Edmund Campion and the other English Martyrs, including the 72,000 Catholics who were killed under orders of the lecherous King Henry VIII between 1534 and 1547, refused to acknowledge as anything other than an illegitimate work of heretics and schismatics, arose to convince Catholics that the English and Irish Martyrs died in vain, that one Christian "tradition" is as good as another.
It is more than a little interesting to point out that the majority of Englishmen alive at the time Henry Tudor took their country out of the true Church in 1534 not only lost the Faith but became bitter foes of almost everything they had believed and done as Catholics within a short period of time. Blessed Edmund Campion was put to death in 1581, just forty-eight years following the "marriage" of Henry Tudor to his scheming mistress, Anne Boleyn. Most Englishmen had become rabid in their hatred of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and all of the other ancient customs and traditions of the Catholic Church.
The passage of less than half a century saw the flushing of the Catholic past of England down the Orwellian memory hole as monks and sisters were driven out of their monasteries and convents as the tenant farmers who lived off of the lands of those monasteries and convents were forced off of them to become the ancestors of the urban poor in England who were at the mercy of the grubby Calvinist capitalist industrialists a little over one hunred seventy years later.
Imagine that, will you?
Less than a half a century.
Oh, how long has it been since Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII began his "opening up" to the world?"
Sixty-five years, seven months, twenty-two days.
Most Catholics in England, Scotland and Wales nearly five hundred years ago refused to follow the path of the English Martyrs as their "liked" the "new order" of things, if you will. Others went along, sometimes out of fear of human respect, sometimes out of fear for their physical lives, sometimes out of fear for losing their property. Still others were confused terribly by the situation.
Does it sound familiar?
A fundamental loss of faith in the space of in sixty-five years has been effected by liturgical and doctrinal revolutionaries, and it has been planned to do so.
To wit, the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict long desired to "reform" what he refers to as the "Petrine ministry" along the lines of how he believes the papacy functioned in the First Millennium. He wrote the following in Principles of Catholic Theology in 1982:
After all, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, in the same bull in which he excommunicated the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and thus inaugurated the schism between East and West, designated the Emperor and the people of Constantinople as "very Christian and orthodox", although their concept of the Roman primary was certainly far less different from that of Cerularius than from that, let us say, of the First Vatican Council. In other words, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 198-199)
Perhaps inspired by his handpicked prefect of the so-called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II became the first conciliar "pope" to speak of a "rethinking" of the "Petrine Ministry" after over twenty years of little "papal" acts that whittled away at the notion of the papacy as a monarchy (the taking off the Papal Tiara by Montini/Paul VI, who also genuflected before Athenagoras, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople; "episcopal collegiality" as envisioned by the "Second" Vatican Council and practiced by the conciliar "popes;" Luciani/John Paul I's "installation" service as opposed to a coronation; endless acts of "papal" inferiority when visiting Talmudic synagogues and Mohammedan mosques and Protestant churches; Ratzinger/Benedict's removal of the tiara from his "papal" coat of arms, replacing it with a mitre). Wojtyla/John Paul II wrote the following in Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, a heretical document that is the antithesis of Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:
Whatever relates to the unity of all Christian communities clearly forms part of the concerns of the primacy. As Bishop of Rome I am fully aware, as I have reaffirmed in the present Encyclical Letter, that Christ ardently desires the full and visible communion of all those Communities in which, by virtue of God's faithfulness, his Spirit dwells. I am convinced that I have a particular responsibility in this regard, above all in acknowledging the ecumenical aspirations of the majority of the Christian Communities and in heeding the request made of me to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation. For a whole millennium Christians were united in "a brotherly fraternal communion of faith and sacramental life ... If disagreements in belief and discipline arose among them, the Roman See acted by common consent as moderator".
In this way the primacy exercised its office of unity. When addressing the Ecumenical Patriarch His Holiness Dimitrios I, I acknowledged my awareness that "for a great variety of reasons, and against the will of all concerned, what should have been a service sometimes manifested itself in a very different light. But ... it is out of a desire to obey the will of Christ truly that I recognize that as Bishop of Rome I am called to exercise that ministry ... I insistently pray the Holy Spirit to shine his light upon us, enlightening all the Pastors and theologians of our Churches, that we may seek—together, of course—the forms in which this ministry may accomplish a service of love recognized by all concerned".
This is an immense task, which we cannot refuse and which I cannot carry out by myself. Could not the real but imperfect communion existing between us persuade Church leaders and their theologians to engage with me in a patient and fraternal dialogue on this subject, a dialogue in which, leaving useless controversies behind, we could listen to one another, keeping before us only the will of Christ for his Church and allowing ourselves to be deeply moved by his plea "that they may all be one ... so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (Jn 17:21)? (Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995.)
Leaving aside all of the references to "imperfect communion" that have been discussed on this site before, one can see a close connection between Wojtyla/John Paul II's revisionist history about how the papacy functioned in the First Millennium and that of the then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Cardinal" Ratzinger.
This revisionist history and heretical view of Papal Primary was also reiterated by the "unofficial" Ravenna Document on October 13, 2007, a document that was cited by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on numerous occasions during his seven years, ten months, nine days as the fifth in the current line of antipopes:
It remains for the question of the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied in greater depth. What is the specific function of the bishop of the “first see” in an ecclesiology of koinonia and in view of what we have said on conciliarity and authority in the present text? How should the teaching of the first and second Vatican councils on the universal primacy be understood and lived in the light of the ecclesial practice of the first millennium? These are crucial questions for our dialogue and for our hopes of restoring full communion between us.
We, the members of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, are convinced that the above statement on ecclesial communion, conciliarity and authority represents positive and significant progress in our dialogue, and that it provides a firm basis for future discussion of the question of primacy at the universal level in the Church. We are conscious that many difficult questions remain to be clarified, but we hope that, sustained by the prayer of Jesus “That they may all be one … so that the world may believe” (Jn 17, 21), and in obedience to the Holy Spirit, we can build upon the agreement already reached. Reaffirming and confessing “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4, 5), we give glory to God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who has gathered us together. (The Ravenna Document)
Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI put his "papal" seal of approval on The Ravenna Document just forty-one days after its issuance on the ninetieth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal:
This year we thank God in particular for the meeting of the Joint Commission which took place in Ravenna, a city whose monuments speak eloquently of the ancient Byzantine heritage handed down to us from the undivided Church of the first millennium. May the splendour of those mosaics inspire all the members of the Joint Commission to pursue their important task with renewed determination, in fidelity to the Gospel and to Tradition, ever alert to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the Church today.
While the meeting in Ravenna was not without its difficulties, I pray earnestly that these may soon be clarified and resolved, so that there may be full participation in the Eleventh Plenary Session and in subsequent initiatives aimed at continuing the theological dialogue in mutual charity and understanding. Indeed, our work towards unity is according to the will of Christ our Lord. In these early years of the third millennium, our efforts are all the more urgent because of the many challenges facing all Christians, to which we need to respond with a united voice and with conviction. (Letter to His Holiness Bartholomaios I, Archbishop of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch, on the occasion of the feast of St. Andrew, November 23, 2007.)
So much for the supposedly "unofficial" nature of The Ravenna Document.
Remember, Modernists believe that the facts of history are in dispute as those who were involved in various, including the true general councils of Holy Mother Church that were guided infallibly by God the Holy Ghost, were the time-bound prisoners of their own "biased" preconceptions. This is how the former President of the "Pontifical" Council for Promoting Chrisitan Unity, Walter Kasper, could heap hot coals upon for giving remarks such as those that he gave in England on May 24, 2003, that placed the infallibly binding nature of Apostolicae Curae into question:
As I see the problem and its possible solution, it is not a question of apostolic succession in the sense of an historical chain of laying on of hands running back through the centuries to one of the apostles; this would be a very mechanical and individualistic vision, which by the way historically could hardly be proved and ascertained. The Catholic view is different from such an individualistic and mechanical approach. Its starting point is the collegium of the apostles as a whole; together they received the promise that Jesus Christ will be with them till the end of the world (Matt 28, 20). So after the death of the historical apostles they had to co-opt others who took over some of their apostolic functions. In this sense the whole of the episcopate stands in succession to the whole of the collegium of the apostles.
To stand in the apostolic succession is not a matter of an individual historical chain but of collegial membership in a collegium, which as a whole goes back to the apostles by sharing the same apostolic faith and the same apostolic mission. The laying on of hands is under this aspect a sign of co-optation in a collegium.
This has far reaching consequences for the acknowledgement of the validity of the episcopal ordination of another Church. Such acknowledgement is not a question of an uninterrupted chain but of the uninterrupted sharing of faith and mission, and as such is a question of communion in the same faith and in the same mission.
It is beyond the scope of our present context to discuss what this means for a re-evaluation of Apostolicae Curae (1896) of Pope Leo XIII, who declared Anglican orders null and void, a decision which still stands between our Churches. Without doubt this decision, as Cardinal Willebrands had already affirmed, must be understood in our new ecumenical context in which our communion in faith and mission has considerably grown. A final solution can only be found in the larger context of full communion in faith, sacramental life, and shared apostolic mission.
Before venturing further on this decisive point for the ecumenical vision, that is a renewed communio ecclesiology, I should speak first on another stumbling block or, better, the stumbling block of ecumenism: the primacy of the bishop of Rome, or as we say today, the Petrine ministry. This question was the sticking point of the separation between Canterbury and Rome in the 16th century and it is still the object of emotional controversies.
Significant progress has been achieved on this delicate issue in our Anglican/Roman Catholic dialogues, especially in the last ARCIC document The Gift of Authority (1998). The problem, however, is that what pleased Catholics in this document did not always please all Anglicans, and points which were important for Anglican self-understanding were not always repaid by Catholic affection. So we still have a reception problem and a challenge for further theological work.
It was Pope John Paul II who opened the door to future discussion on this subject. In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995) he extended an invitation to a fraternal dialogue on how to exercise the Petrine ministry in a way that is more acceptable to non-Catholic Christians. It was a source of pleasure for us that among others the Anglican community officially responded to this invitation. The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity gathered the many responses, analyzed the data, and sent its conclusions to the churches that had responded. We hope in this way to have initiated a second phase of a dialogue that will be decisive for the future of the ecumenical approach.
Nobody could reasonably expect that we could from the outset reach a phase of consensus; but what we have reached is not negligible. It has become evident that a new atmosphere and a new climate exist. In our globalized world situation the biblical testimonies on Peter and the Petrine tradition of Rome are read with new eyes because in this new context the question of a ministry of universal unity, a common reference point and a common voice of the universal church, becomes urgent. Old polemical formulas stand at odds with this urgency; fraternal relations have become the norm. Extensive research has been undertaken that has highlighted the different traditions between East and West already in the first millennium, and has traced the development in understanding and in practice of the Petrine ministry throughout the centuries. As well, the historical conditionality of the dogma of the First Vatican Council (1869-70), which must be distinguished from its remaining obligatory content, has become clear. This historical development did not come to an end with the two Vatican Councils, but goes on, and so also in the future the Petrine ministry has to be exercised in line with the changing needs of the Church.
These insights have led to a re-interpretation of the dogma of the Roman primacy. This does not at all mean that there are still not enormous problems in terms of what such a ministry of unity should look like, how it should be administered, whether and to what degree it should have jurisdiction and whether under certain circumstances it could make infallible statements in order to guarantee the unity of the Church and at the same time the legitimate plurality of local churches. But there is at least a wide consensus about the common central problem, which all churches have to solve: how the three dimensions, highlighted already by the Lima documents on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), namely unity through primacy, collegiality through synodality, and communality of all the faithful and their spiritual gifts, can be brought into a convincing synthesis. (A Vision of Christian Unity for the Next Generation.)
This is simply apostasy of the highest order. Apostolic succession is not "an historical chain of laying on of hands running back through the centuries to one of the apostles"? The perpetually binding nature of Apostolicae Cenae needs to be re-evaluated? No member of the Catholic Church is free to assert such things and remain a Catholic in good standing (see Number 9, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)
The dogmatic decrees of the [First] Vatican Council are historically conditioned?
Ah, but this is why, you see, Walter Kasper did not believe that there was any need to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of Anglicans to the Catholic Church, who he clearly believes have true bishops and true priests. It is simply up to the Lambeth Committee to chart its own "direction," to determine, in Kasper's words, whether Anglicans belongs more "to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox," which leads to the second major error in Kasper's recent remarks: that the patriarchies of the East constituted a separate "church" prior to the Greek Schism of 1054. No such "church" existed.
Lost in all of this willingness to subject immutable truths to the "historical-critical" method of Hegelian analysis is the fact that one is either a Catholic who assents to all of the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith, or he he is not. How absurd is it to ask Protestants to determine whether they belong to the Protestantism in which their sects had their origins? The Anglican "church" has no right from God to exist. It is a false religion. Its adherents are in need to be converted unconditionally to the Catholic Church. Those who have been received into the ranks of the counterfeit church of conciliarism from the Anglican sect in the past six years were not required to make any kind of abjuration of error. All they had to do was to attest to their agreement with the conciliar church's so-called Catechism of the Catholic Church, a document that is heretical (see The New Catechism: Is it Catholic? and my own Paragon of Conciliar Orthodoxy).
Walter Kasper and his two chief enablers in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, were pretty blatant in their disregard for the Apostolicae Curae as they engaged in publicly notorious acts that give the impression of conferring an acceptance of Anglican orders as valid. Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done the same, and the "evensong" that will take place four weeks from today is simply the latest example of one false religious sect with heretical beliefs and invalid liturgical rites legitimzing another false religious sect with heretical beliefs and invalid liturgical rites.
Each of the revolutionaries named in the previous paragraph have shown manifest contempt for these words of Pope Leo XIII:
We decree that these letters and all things contained therein shall not be liable at any time to be impugned or objected to by reason of fault or any other defect whatsoever of subreption or obreption of our intention, but are and shall be always valid and in force and shall be inviolably observed both juridically and otherwise, by all of whatsoever degree and preeminence, declaring null and void anything which, in these matters, may happen to be contrariwise attempted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by any person whatsoever, by whatsoever authority or pretext, all things to the contrary notwithstanding. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, September 15, 1896.)although the conciliar officials claim that Protestant sects are in "partial communion" with the Catholic Church and thus have "elements of truth and sanctification," there is no such thing as "partial communion" with the Catholic Church. One is either a member of the Catholic Church or he is not. Pope Leo XIII, writing with the Orthodox in mind in the following passage from Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894, made this very clear. So did Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943:
Weigh carefully in your minds and before God the nature of Our request. It is not for any human motive, but impelled by Divine Charity and a desire for the salvation of all, that We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the Tenets of Belief and an intercourse of Fraternal love. The True Union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a Unity of Faith and Unity of Government. (Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 29, 1894.)
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)
Adherents of any false religion must be converted unconditionally to the Catholic Church as they publicly abjure their errors and make a profession in everything contained in the Deposit of Faith without any reservation or qualification whatsoever.
Everything that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has done in the past nearly eleven years, three months, nine days has pointed to a very well thought-out plan to change the entire nature of how the conciliar Petrine ministry" is exercise. Only those willing to suspend all rationality can accept this gratuitius denial of what is part of the Divine Constitution of Holy Mother Church and was defined solemnly at the [First] Vatican Council on July 18, 1870:
1. And so, supported by the clear witness of Holy Scripture, and adhering to the manifest and explicit decrees both of our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs and of general councils, we promulgate anew the definition of the ecumenical Council of Florence [49], which must be believed by all faithful Christians, namely that the Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold a world-wide primacy, and that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, the prince of the apostles, true vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church and father and teacher of all Christian people.
To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal Church.
All this is to be found in the acts of the ecumenical councils and the sacred canons.
2. Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman Church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other Church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world.
3. In this way, by unity with the Roman Pontiff in communion and in profession of the same faith , the Church of Christ becomes one flock under one Supreme Shepherd [50].
4. This is the teaching of the Catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation.
5. This power of the Supreme Pontiff by no means detracts from that ordinary and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the apostles by appointment of the Holy Spirit, tend and govern individually the particular flocks which have been assigned to them. On the contrary, this power of theirs is asserted, supported and defended by the Supreme and Universal Pastor; for St. Gregory the Great says: “My honor is the honor of the whole Church. My honor is the steadfast strength of my brethren. Then do I receive true honor, when it is denied to none of those to whom honor is due.” [51]
6. Furthermore, it follows from that supreme power which the Roman Pontiff has in governing the whole Church, that he has the right, in the performance of this office of his, to communicate freely with the pastors and flocks of the entire Church, so that they may be taught and guided by him in the way of salvation.
7. And therefore we condemn and reject the opinions of those who hold that this communication of the Supreme Head with pastors and flocks may be lawfully obstructed; or that it should be dependent on the civil power, which leads them to maintain that what is determined by the Apostolic See or by its authority concerning the government of the Church, has no force or effect unless it is confirmed by the agreement of the civil authority.
8. Since the Roman Pontiff, by the divine right of the apostolic primacy, governs the whole Church, we likewise teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful [52], and that in all cases which fall under ecclesiastical jurisdiction recourse may be had to his judgment [53]. The sentence of the Apostolic See (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon [54]. And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman Pontiff.
9. So, then, if anyone says that the Roman Pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church, and this not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the Church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the Churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema. (Chapter 3, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Vatican Council, July 18, 1870.)
Yet it is that Jorge Mario Bergoglio continues to propagate a myth and desires to find a way to exercise the office of what he thinks is the "Bishop of Rome" in a manner that tears to shred the letter and the spirit of the [First] Vatican Council and thus the entire received patrimony of the Catholic Church, and the only thing that the new "Bishop of Rome" is doing is to, as mentioned in the introduction, is concretizing what has heretofore been merely theoretical. Well, it is theoretical no longer.
As an antidote to this poison about the nature of the papacy, consider a few excerpts from Dom Prosper Gueranger's reflections on the the papacy written for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29:
In the case of a priest admitted into partnership with the eternal Pontiff, love is not complete, except when it extends itself to the whole of mankind ransomed by the great Sacrifice. This entails upon him more than the obligation common to all Christians of loving one another as fellow-members of one Head; for, by this priesthood, he forms part of that Head, and by this very title charity should assume in him something in depth and character of the love which the divine Head bear towards his members. But more than this: what if to the power he possesses of immolating Christ, to the duty incumbent on him of the joint offering of himself likewise in the secret of the Mysteries the plenitude of the pontificate be added, imposing the public mission of giving to the Church the support she needs, that fecundity which the heavenly Spouse exacts of her? According to the doctrine expressed expressed from the earliest ages by the Popes, the Councils and the fathers, the Holy Ghost adapts him to his sublime role by fully identifying his love with that of the Spouse, whose obligation he fulfils, whose rights he exercises. Then, likewise, according to the same teaching, there stands before him the precept of the apostle; from throne to throne of all the bishops, whether of East or West, the angels of the Churches pass on the word: ‘Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for her, that he might sanctify her.’
Such is the divine reality of these mysterious nuptials, that every age of sacred history has basted with the name of adultery the irregular abandonment of the Church first espoused. So much is exacted by this sublime union that one may be called to it who is not already abiding steadfast on the lofty summit of perfection; for a bishop must ever hold ready to justify in his own person that supreme degree of charity of which our Lord saith: ‘Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ Nor does the difference between the hireling and the true shepherd end there; this readiness of the Pontiff to defend unto death the Church confided to him, to wash away even in his own blood every stain that disfigures the beauty of this bride, is itself the guarantee of that contracted whereby he is wedded to this chosen one of the Son of God, and it is the just price of those purest of joys reserved to him.
‘These things have I spoken to you,’ saith our Lord, when instituting the Testament of the new Alliance, ‘that my joy may be in you and your joy may be filled.’
If such should be the privileges and obligations of the bishop of Church, how much more so in the case of the universal Pastor! When regenerated man was confided to Simon, son of John, by the Incarnate God, his chief care was in the first place, to make sure that he would indeed be the Vicar of his love; that, having received more than the rest, he would love more than all of them; that, being the inheritor of the love of Jesus for his own who were in the world, he would love, as he had done, even to the end. For this reason Peter’s martyrdom is foretold in the Gospel immediately after our Lord has confirmed him in his office of chief Pastor of the flock; the Pontiff-King, he must follow, even to the Cross, the supreme Ruler of the Church.
The feast of his two Charis, that of Antioch and that of Rome, have recalled to our minds the sovereignty whereby he presides over the government of the whole world, and the infallibility of the doctrine which he distributes as food to the whole flock; but these two feasts and the primacy to which they bear witness in the sacred cycle, call for that completion and further sanction afforded by the teachings including in to-day’s festival. Just as the power received by the Man-God from his Father and the full communication made by him of this power to the visible Head of his Church had for their end the consummation of glory, the one object of the thrice-holy God in the whole of his work; so likewise all jurisdiction, all teaching, all ministry here below, says St. Paul, has for end the consummation of the saints, which is but one with the consummation of this sovereign glory; and the sanctity of the creature and the glory of God, Creator and Saviour, taken together, find their full expression only in the Sacrifice which embraces both Shepherd and flock in the same holocaust.
It was for this final end of all pontificate, of all hierarchy, that Peter, from the day of Jesus’ Ascension, traversed the earth. At Joppa, when he was beginning his apostolic labours, a mysterious hunger seized him; ‘Arise, Peter, kill and eat,’ said the Spirit; and at the same hour, in symbolic vision, were presented before his gaze all the animals of earth and all the birds of heaven. This was the Gentile world which he must join to the remnant of Israel on the divine banquet-board. Vicar of the Word, he must share his vast hunger; his preaching, like a two-edged sword, will strike down whole nations before him; his charity, like a devouring fire, will assimilate to itself the peoples; realizing his title of Head, the day will come when as true Head of the world he will have formed (from all mankind, become now a prey to his avidity) the body of Christ in his own person. Then like a new Isaac, or rather a very Christ, he will behold rising before him the mountain where the Lord seeth, awaiting the oblation. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume 12, Time After Pentecost, Book III.)
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., thus summaried the entirety of the nature of the papacy, inclduing its primacy and infalliblity, that the Orthodox and Modernists such as Montini, Wotyla, Ratzinger, and Bergoglio reject. The great Benedictine's prayer to Saint Peter on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul also reminds us that there can be no separation between the See of Peter and him who occupies it, meaning that one who recognizes the claim of a man to be a true pope does not have the luxury of making any distinction between loving the See of Peter and obeying the reigning Successor of Saint Peter:
O Peter, we also hail thy glorious tomb! Well does it behoove us, thy chosen sons of the West, to celebrate with faith and love the glories of this day. If all nations are moved at thy tidings of thy triumphant death; if all tongues proclaim that from Rome the law of the Lord must come forth unto the whole world; is it not because thy death has turned Babylon into that city of divine oracles hailed by the son of Amos in his prophecy? It is not because the mountain prepared in distant ages to bear the house of the Lord comes forth from the mist and stands in full daylight before all peoples? The site of the new Sion is for ever fixed; for on this day is the corner-stone laid; and Jerusalem is to have no other foundation that this tried and precious stone.
O Peter, on thee must we build; for we wish to be dwellers in the holy city. We will follow our Lord’s counsel, by raising our structure upon the rock, so that it may resist the storm, and may become an eternal abode. Our gratitude to thee, who hast vouchsafed to uphold us, is all the greater, since our senseless age tries to build a new social edifice on the shifting sands of public opinion, and therefore accomplishes nothing except ruin and confusion! Is the stone rejected by our modern architects any the less the head of the corner? And does not its strength appear in the fact (as it is written) that, having rejected, and cast it aside they stumble against it and are hurt, yea broken?
Standing erect amid these ruins, firm upon the foundation, the rock against which the gates of hell cannot prevail, we have a the more right to extol this day, on which the Lord hath, as the psalmist says, established the earth. The Lord did indeed manifest his greatness when he cast the vast orbs into space, and poised them by laws so marvelous that the mere discovery thereof does honour to science; but his reign, his beauty, his power, are far more stupendous when he lays the basis prepared by him to support that temple of which a myriad of worlds scarcely deserve to be called the pavement. Of this immortal day did eternal Wisdom sing, when divinely foretasting its pure delights, and preluding our gladness, he thus led on our happy chorus. ‘When our mountains with their large bulk were being balanced were being established, and when the earth was balanced on its poles, when he established the sky above and poised the fountains of waters, when he laid the foundations of the earth, I was with him forming all things; and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times, playing in the world, for my delights are to be with the children of men.’
Now that eternal Wisdom is raising upon thee, O Peter, the house of her mysterious delights, where else could she possibly find her, or be inebriated with her chalice, or advance in her love. Now that Jesus hath returned to heaven, and given us thee to hold his place, is it not henceforth from thee that we have the words of eternal life? In thee is continued the mystery of the Word made Flesh and dwelling amongst us. Our religion and our love of our Lord are incomplete if they do not acknowledge thee as Vicar. Thou hast thyself having joined the Son of Man at the right hand of the Father, the cultus paid to thee on account of thy divine prerogatives reaches thy successors, and which cannot possibly be fitted into a subtle distinction between the See of Peter and him who occupies it. In the Roman Pontiff, thou art ever, O Peter, the one sole shepherd and support of the world. If our Lord hath said: ‘No man cometh to the Father but by me,’ we also know that none can reach the Lord save by thee. How could the rights of the Son of God, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, suffer through such homage paid by a grateful earth unto thee? We cannot celebrate thy greatness without turning our thoughts to him, likewise of whom thou art a sensible sign an august sacrament. Thou seemest to say to us, as heretofore our fathers by the inscription of thine ancient statue: CONTEMPLATE GOD THE WORD, THE STONE DIVINELY CUT INTO STONE, UPON WHICH FIRMLY FIXED I CANNOT BE SHAKEN!’ (pp. 348-350.)
No one can be forced to "see" the truth of our situation for what it is, that the conciliar revolutionaries are not Catholic and that they belong to a counterfeit church bereft of Holy Orders and of the graces that flow therefrom. That any of our true bishops and priests, among so many others, who have seen things clearly in the past forty years, right in the midst of a most diabolically clever use of the media to convey images of Catholicism and Catholicity, is the working of the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flowed into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. We must remember that it is very easy to go "back," to refuse to "kick against the goad," to "conform" to what the "mainstream" believes is "respectable" and "prudent."
The "mainstream" is not to be followed.
God permitted one hundred percent of the human race to be deceived in the Garden of Eden.
God permitted all but eight members of the human race to be deceived and deluded prior to the Great Flood.
Almost all of the Chosen People who had been led out of their bondage to the slavery of the Egyptian Pharaoh by Moses built and worshiped a molten calf whilst Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai.
All but a handful of people stood by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He suffered and died for us on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.
All but one bishop, Saint John Fisher of Rochester, England, defected from the Faith at the time of the Protestant Revolt in England when King Henry VIII took this thoroughly Catholic country out of the Church.
All but thirty bishops defected from the Faith at the time Queen Elizabeth I took England out of the Church once again in the 1660s following the brief restoration that took place under the reign of her half-sister, Queen Mary, from 1553 to 1558.
The "mainstream" is not be followed. We need apostolic courage in these times of apostasy and betrayal. God's greater honor and glory must be defended against the against of men who have proved themselves to be precursors of the Antichrist.
How do we think that we are going to recognize, no less resist and reject, the Antichrist when he comes we are so complacent and smug in the face of the groundwork that is being laid by his conciliar minions for his coming? Will the emotionalism of sentimentality and the delusion of positivism not prevail then in the minds and hearts of most men?
It's been over eighteen years, two months ago now since I began to publicly write about the plausibility of the sedevacantist thesis. I can report that those eighteen years have been difficult ones, humanly speaking, as friendships have been strained or broken and as many former contributors stopped donating to us. Obviously, friendship is a free gift and people are free also to end non-tax-deductible donations whenever they want to do so. It is not for the "money" or for any kind of "honor" or "prestige" that one comes to recognize that the conciliar "popes" have indeed been figures of Antichrist. To embrace sedevacantism is to lose one's credibility on all subjects, including that of the defense of the Social Reign of Christ the King, in the eyes of traditionally-minded "gatekeepers" in the "resist but recognize movement," some of whom would rather turn to lifelong Protestants or to Catholic apostates turned Protestants or Mormons for "commentary" on the events of the day.
No, embracing the truth of our ecclesiastical situation does not make one any bit better than those who do not. Indeed, some of the worst witnesses in behalf of sedevacantism are sedevacantists, both clergy and laity. The bad example given by those who do see the truth of our ecclesiastical situation does not invalidate the truth that they seek to defend despite all of the opposition that is engendered thereby.
No one has anything to gain, humanly speaking by recognizing that the conciliar "popes" are apostates and their liturgical rites are sacramentally barren and offensive to God and their doctrines have been condemned repeatedly by the authority of the Catholic Church. Yes, it is good to suffer for one's sins. It is necessary to do so in order to save one's soul. One does not embrace the truth in order to suffer, though, as that suffering will find him in due course.
Sedevacantists compose only a handful of mostly warring tribes, a conflict caused by the fact that we lack the Principle of Unity represented in the person of a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter. Catholics who understand that the See of Peter is vacant at this time are not the problem facing Holy Mother Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal. Just take a look at the evidence presented above if you believe that I am mistaken.
All the more reason, of course, to flee from everything to do with conciliarism and its false shepherds. If we can't see that the public esteeming of false religions and of the symbols and places of "worship" of false religions is offensive to God and can in no way lead to any kind of authentic restoration of the "Catholic" Church, then it is perhaps necessary to recall these words of Saint Teresa of Avila in her Foundations:
"Know this: it is by very little breaches of regularity that the devil succeeds in introducing the greatest abuses. May you never end up saying: 'This is nothing, this is an exaggeration.'" (Saint Teresa of Avila, Foundations, Chapter Twenty-nine)
We turn, as always to Our Lady, who holds us in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle. We must, as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, trusting that we might be able to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of that same Immaculate Heart.
We may not see until eternity, please God and by the graces He sends to us through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother, the fruit of the seeds we plant by means of our prayers and penances and sacrifices, given unto the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must remain confident, however, that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ wants to us, as unworthy as we are, to try to plant a few seeds so that more and more Catholics in the conciliar structures, both "priests" and laity alike, will recognize that it is indeed a sin to stand by He is blasphemed by Modernists, that He--and His true priesthood--are to be found in the catacombs where no concessions at all are made to conciliarism or its wolves in shepherds' clothing.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Fatima, 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.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Pope Saint Silverius, pray for us.