"Traditional" Pots Calling "Conservative" Kettles Black

The ubiquitous denizen of the Gallican resist while recognize world, “Archbishop” Carlo Maria Vigano, who is ever ready for interviews with like-minded “traditionalists” who believe that true pope must be resisted and can be an object of derision and defiance rather than reverence and obedience, reacted as follows after Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s recent interview conducted by Norah O’Donnell on the Columbia Broadcasting System’s 60 Minutes news magazine that was televised on Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2024:

You have heard it: “A conservative is someone who clings to something and does not want to see beyond it. It is a suicidal attitude… to lock oneself in a dogmatic box.”

For once, Bergoglio is absolutely right: conservatism wants to “preserve” the outward appearances of Tradition, without the doctrinal substance that makes it alive. Conservatism is the attitude of those who criticize the excesses of the synodical church but are careful not to question the causes, which are to be found in Vatican II.

Conservatism is really “suicidal behaviour” because it creates an artificial “dogmatic box,” made of Novus Ordo ad orientem with Roman chasubles and Gregorian chants and also of Vetus Ordo; made of selected quotations of some conciliar documents, accidentally not contrasting with the Catholic Magisterium of all time; made of the apotheosis of John Paul II and the regret of Benedict XVI, whom we all loved.

But Tradition is not conservatism; Tradition is not a “dogmatic box” because it draws from the limpid and pure water of the divine source, drawing from grace and fidelity to the Gospel and the Depositum Fidei the lifeblood that makes it capable of looking to the future without denying the past.

Tradition develops like an athlete, who goes from childhood to adolescence and adulthood always remaining the same and developing his body harmoniously, so that he can face new challenges and overcome them.

Semper idem, always the same. (Archbishop Viganò: Pope Francis is right that conservatism ‘is a suicidal attitude’.)

“Archbishop” Vigano has read far, far too much into Bergoglio’s comment about “conservative” “bishops” in the United States of America.

As I noted in As a “General Rule,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is Antichrist’s Best Friend, I do not think that it was Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s intention to make any kind of distinction between “conservatism” and “traditionalism.” The Argentine Apostate meant to lump everyone who dissents from his “agenda” as “suicidal,” and he, assisted by Vigano’s successor as the conciliar nuncio to the United States of America, Christophe Pierre, is going to make sure that the “dark days” of these “conservatives” within the hierarchy of his false religious sect within the United States of America will be replaced with the “light” of his “smell the scent of the sheep” “pastoral” approach when he replaces a number of the men he considers rigid fuddy-duddies immediately upon their retirement.

Vigano’s own efforts to pose a distinction between “conservative” Catholics who cite selectively from conciliar documents while ignoring how these documents depart from Catholic teaching and his own brand of “traditionalism” is both self-serving and entirely hypocritical as he is just as selective as the “conservatives” (and I was one until 2001) he lambastes.

To wit, one has to be pretty selective to heap praise upon the late New Theologian, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, while ignoring the following rather inconvenient facts:

Joseph Alois Ratzinger was one of the key revolutionary periti at the “Second” Vatican Council, and it was after he had consulted with a Lutheran “theologian” that the word “subsisit” was inserted into the text of Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, to claim that the Church of Christs subsists in the Catholic Church, meaning that the Church of Christ is not coextensive with the Catholic Church.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger constantly praised the ability of false religions to produce “peace’ and called non-Catholic Protestant “ministers” servants of the Gospel.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger reject what he disparaged as the “ecumenism of the return” when addressing representatives of “ecclesial communities” and the Orthodox in Cologne, Germany, on August 19, 2005:

We all know there are numerous models of unity and you know that the Catholic Church also has as her goal the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ, as defined by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its various Documents (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 8, 13; Unitatis Redintegratio, nn. 2, 4, etc.). This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 4); the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world.

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!

It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity: in my Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June last, I insisted that full unity and true catholicity in the original sense of the word go together. As a necessary condition for the achievement of this coexistence, the commitment to unity must be constantly purified and renewed; it must constantly grow and mature. (Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English)

Here is what our true popes have written on the matter of the "ecumenism of the return:"

"It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd." (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: "The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly." The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone could believe that "this unity in the Church which arises from a divine foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills." For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one, compacted and fitly joined together, it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Joseph Alois Ratzinger, as has been document over seven hundred times on this website, made a lifelong warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, which was a lifelong warfare against the very nature of God Himself.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger personally entered temples of false worship, praised those who adored false idols, and personally esteemed the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger constantly praised both “religious liberty” (one of his endless “keys to peace” that he kept inventing over the decades) and “separation of Church and State” even though both have been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger put into doubt the historicity of Sacred Scripture, denied Our Lord’s Bodily Resurrection from the dead (and personally “consecrated” a protégé, Bruno Forte, who had done the same despite the protests of the Italian “bishops”), speculated that it was not Saint Peter himself who had delivered Holy Mother Church’s first Urbi et Orbi address on Pentecost Sunday, and said that it “Jewish understanding of the Old Testament” was a “reasonable one” and that it was not clear that every page of Holy Writ pointed unequivocally to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Joseph Alois Ratzinger personally discouraged a Lutheran woman, Sigrid Spath, from converting to what she believed to be the Catholic Church prior to her death (see Sigrid Spath – Novus Ordo Watch for the confirmed details).
Joseph Alois Ratzinger helped to pave the way for Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s surrender of faithful Catholics in Red China to the Chicom sponsored “Patriotic Association” that had been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Ad Aposotolum Princips, June 29, 1958. (See A Betrayal Worthy of the Antichrist, Red China: Still A Workshop For The New Ecclesiology, Still Selling The Rope After All These Years, part two, Neville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church, Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their Persecutors, and Vanquished by Our Lady: Comrade Bergoglio) a week before the much-anticipated issuance of Summorum Pontificum.

Interestingly, however, Ratzinger’s letter to Chinese Catholics contradicted Summorum Pontificum on how to understand human history, which Ratzinger/Benedict said in his letter to Chinese Catholics, July 30, 2007, was indecipherable even though he noted in his explanatory letter to Summorum Pontificum was fully understandable:

History remains indecipherable, incomprehensible. No one can read it. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007.)

If history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible," as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China of June 30, 2007, what business did have a week later trying to "teach" us about alleged "missed opportunities" to prevent or heal schisms in the past?

Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to unable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!" (2 Corinthians 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows. (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum")

If history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible, as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China on June 30, 2007, then how was it possible on July 7, 2007, to "decipher" that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity?"

Remember, Ratzinger/Benedict wrote the following in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China:

If "no one can read" history, then how can Ratzinger/Benedict claim to know that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity"?

Speaking of Joseph Alois Ratzinger’s Summorum Pontificum, which was abrogated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Traditionis Custodes, July 16, 2021, the late disciple of the Hegelian named Hans Urs von Balthasar, whom he once called the “most cultured man of the century,” told us repeatedly that he issued his motu proprio to “pacify spirits”:

Leading men and women to God, to the God Who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith - ecumenism - is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light - this is inter-religious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love 'to the end' has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity - this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical 'Deus caritas est'.

"So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, March 10, 2009.)

Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., Director of the Holy See Press Office: What do you say to those who, in France, fear that the "Motu proprio' Summorum Pontificum signals a step backwards from the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?

Benedict XVI: Their fear is unfounded, for this "Motu Proprio' is merely an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim, for those people who were brought up with this liturgy, who love it, are familiar with it and want to live with this liturgy. They form a small group, because this presupposes a schooling in Latin, a training in a certain culture. Yet for these people, to have the love and tolerance to let them live with this liturgy seems to me a normal requirement of the faith and pastoral concern of any Bishop of our Church. There is no opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy.

On each day [of the Council], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass in accordance with the ancient rite and, at the same time, they conceived of a natural development for the liturgy within the whole of this century, for the liturgy is a living reality that develops but, in its development, retains its identity. Thus, there are certainly different accents, but nevertheless [there remains] a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy. In any case, I believe that there is an opportunity for the enrichment of both parties. On the one hand the friends of the old liturgy can and must know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc.... On the other, the new liturgy places greater emphasis on common participation, but it is not merely an assembly of a certain community, but rather always an act of the universal Church in communion with all believers of all times, and an act of worship. In this sense, it seems to me that there is a mutual enrichment, and it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our time. (Interview of the Holy Father during the flight to France, September 12, 2008.)

Liturgical worship is the supreme expression of priestly and episcopal life, just as it is of catechetical teaching. Your duty to sanctify the faithful people, dear Brothers, is indispensable for the growth of the Church. In the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, I was led to set out the conditions in which this duty is to be exercised, with regard to the possibility of using the missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962) in addition to that of Pope Paul VI (1970). Some fruits of these new arrangements have already been seen, and I hope that, thanks be to God, the necessary pacification of spirits is already taking place. I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all, lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn. Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and never rejected. God, who loves all men and women and wishes none to be lost, entrusts us with this mission by appointing us shepherds of his sheep. We can only thank him for the honour and the trust that he has placed in us. Let us therefore strive always to be servants of unity! (Meeting with the French Bishops in the Hemicycle Sainte-Bernadette, Lourdes, 14 September 2008.)

Ratzinger/Benedict’s supposed magnanimity to traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that it is the Catholic Church and the conciliar entity has true sacramental rites, true bishops, true priests and continues to have true popes was based on sentiment towards those who have a “nostalgic” or “aesthetic” attachment to an “older” liturgy, not upon a desire to protect the inviolable integrity of the doctrines of the Holy Faith. Summorum Pontificum was bound to weaken over time as it was founded upon false premises that were not clear in the ever opaque, obscurantist, Hegelian mind of Antipope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger/Benedict repeatedly contradicted himself in the explanatory letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum in 2007 and then in the explanatory letter he issued in early 2009 to explain why he lifted the ban of excommunication that his predecessor, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, had imposed upon Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alonso de Galaretta in 1988 after they had been consecrated without a “papal” mandate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio Castro de Mayer, both of whom remain “excommunicated” to this day.

There is obviously so much more.

However, to praise Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI while ignoring his patent apostasies is precisely what Father Carlo Mario Vigano accuses “conservatives” of doing to “save” the “Second” Vatican Council from its own self-immolation as well as to keep alive the myth of “Pope John Paul II the Great.”

Moreover, Father Carlo Maria Vigano shares with his fellow “resist while recognize” devotees a persistently selective reliance upon incomplete citations of Saint Robert Bellarmine’s teaching about the fact that a heretical pope is no pope at all and a wholesale ignoring of papal condemnations of the nonexistent “right” of Catholics to criticize a true pope openly, including in printed journals, or to obey defy him with impunity.

The violent attacks of Protestantism against the Papacy, its calumnies and so manifest, the odious caricatures it scattered abroad, had undoubtedly inspired France with horror; nevertheless the sad impressions remained. In such accusations all, perhaps, was not false. Mistrust was excited, and instead of drawing closer to the insulted and outraged Papacy, France stood on her guard against it. In vain did Fenelon, who felt the danger, write in his treatise on the "Power of the Pope," and, to remind France of her sublime mission and true role in the world, compose his "History of Charlemagne." In vain did Bossuet majestically rise in the midst of that agitated assembly of 1682, convened to dictate laws to the Holy See, and there, in most touching accents, give vent to professions of fidelity and devotedness toward the Chair of St. Peter. We already notice in his discourse mention no longer made of the "Sovereign Pontiff." The "Holy See," the "Chair of St. Peter," the "Roman Church," were alone alluded to. First and alas! too manifest signs of coldness in the eyes of him who knew the nature and character of France! Others might obey through duty, might allow themselves to be governed by principle--France, never! She must be ruled by an individual, she must love him that governs her, else she can never obey.

These weaknesses should at least have been hidden in the shadow of the sanctuary, to await the time in which some sincere and honest solution of the misunderstanding could be given. But no! parliaments took hold of it, national vanity was identified with it. A strange spectacle was now seen. A people the most Catholic in the world; kings who called themselves the Eldest Sons of the Church and who were really such at heart; grave and profoundly Christian magistrates, bishops, and priests, though in the depths of their heart attached to Catholic unity,--all barricading themselves against the head of the Church; all digging trenches and building ramparts, that his words might not reach the Faithful before being handled and examined, and the laics convinced that they contained nothing false, hostile or dangerous. (Right Reverend Emile Bougaud, The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Published in 1890 by Benziger Brothers. Re-printed by TAN Books and Publishers, 1990, pp. 24-29.)

This is precisely what so many Catholics, especially a number of younger Catholics who are trying to find some way to avoid being "stigmatized" as one of those "fringe" Catholics called who believe that the whole conciliar enterprise is but a counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church and that the men who have claimed to be Successors of Saint Peter have been imposters and charlatans. Some of these younger Catholics are trotting out examples that have nothing to do with the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, which does not extend to the appointment of bishops or other administrative decisions, or have been citing French theologians of a century ago who sought to minimize the reverence and obedience that Catholics are to render to Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth. These understandably confused Catholics (I was an adherent of the false "resist while recognize" belief system from December of 2002 until the end of April 2006) have chosen to cling to the "bad popes" mythology that flies on the face of the refutation by, among others, Saint Robert Bellarmine (see Saint Robert Bellarmine's Defense of Popes Said to Have Erred in Faith), Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., and the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council of all claims that there have been "heretical" popes. Such is an ontological impossibility.

Additionally, a lot of Catholics, including a growing number of "bishops" within the strucures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, keep pulling out the old "resist while recognize" chestnut that mispresents Saint Robert Bellarmine's teaching concerng whether it is possible for a council to remove a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter. No one of whom I am aware in the "resist while recognize" movement have ever acknowledged that they have omitted, whether intentionally or inadvertently, the totality of Saint Robert Bellarmine's teaching about a pope who should fall into heresy by ignoring his fifth considedration on the matter:

“For although Liberius was not a heretic, nevertheless he was considered one, on account of the peace he made with the Arians, and by that presumption the pontificate could rightly [merito] be taken from him: for men are not bound, or able to read hearts; but when they see that someone is a heretic by his external works, they judge him to be a heretic pure and simple [simpliciter], and condemn him as a heretic.”

“The fourth opinion is of Cajetan [322]. There, he teaches, that a manifestly heretical Pope is not ipso facto deposed; but can and ought to be deposed by the Church. Now in my judgment, such an opinion cannot be defended. For in the first place, that a manifest heretic would be ipso facto deposed,is proven from authority and reason. The Authority is of St. Paul, who commands Titus [323], that after two censures, that is, after he appears manifestly pertinacious, an heretic is to be shunned: and he understands this before excommunication and sentence of a judge. Jerome comments on the same place, saying that other sinners, through a judgment of excommunication are excluded from the Church; heretics, however, leave by themselves and are cut from the body of Christ, but a Pope who remains the Pope cannot be shunned. How will we shun our Head? How will we recede from a member to whom we are joined?

“Now in regard to reason this is indeed very certain. A non-Christian cannot in any way be Pope, as Cajetan affirms in the same book [324], and the reason is because he cannot be the head of that which he is not a member, and he is not a member of the Church who is not a Christian. But a manifest heretic is not a Christian, as St. Cyprian and many other Fathers clearly teach [325]. Therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.”

“Next, the Holy Fathers teach in unison, that not only are heretics outside the Church, but they even lack all Ecclesiastical jurisdiction and dignity ipso facto. Cyprian says: “We say that all heretics and schismatics have not power and right” [327]. He also teaches that heretics returning to the Church must be received as laymen; even if beforehand they were priests or bishops in the Church [328]. Optatus teaches that heretics and schismatics cannot hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven, nor loose or bind [329]. Ambrose and Augustine teach the same, as does St. Jerome who says: “Bishops who were heretics cannot continue to be so; rather let them be constituted such who were received that were not heretics” [330].”

“Next, even St. Thomas teaches that schismatics immediately loose all jurisdiction; and if they try to do something from jurisdiction, it is useless [331]. Nor does the response which some make avail, that these Fathers speak according to ancient laws, but now since the decree of the Council of Constance they do not lose jurisdiction, unless excommunicated by name, or if they strike clerics. I say this avails to nothing. For those Fathers, when they say that heretics lose jurisdiction, do not allege any human laws which maybe did not exist then on this matter; rather, they argued from the nature of heresy. Moreover, the Council of Constance does not speak except on the excommunicates, that is, on these who lose jurisdiction through a judgment of the Church. Yet heretics are outside the Church, even before excommunication, and deprived of all jurisdiction, for they are condemned by their own judgment, as the Apostle teaches to Titus; that is, they are cut from the body of the Church without excommunication, as Jerome expresses it.”

“Now the fifth true opinion, is that a Pope who is a manifest heretic, ceases in himself to be Pope and head, just as he ceases in himself to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church: whereby, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the opinion of all the ancient Fathers, who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction, and namely St. Cyprian who speaks on Novation, who was a “Pope” in schism with Cornelius: “He cannot hold the Episcopacy, although he was a bishop first, he fell from the body of his fellow bishops and from the unity of the Church” [332]. There he means that Novation, even if he was a true and legitimate Pope; still would have fallen from the pontificate by himself, if he separated himself from the Church. The same is the opinion of the learned men of our age, as John Driedo teaches [333], those who are cast out as excommunicates, or leave on their own and oppose the Church are separated from it, namely heretics and schismatics. He adds in the same work [334], that no spiritual power remains in them, who have departed from the Church, over those who are in the Church. Melchior Cano teaches the same thing, when he says that heretics are not part of the Church, nor members [335], and he adds in the last Chapter, 12th argument, that someone cannot even be informed in thought, that he should be head and Pope, who is not a member nor a part, and he teaches the same thing in eloquent words, that secret heretics are still in the Church and are parts and members, and that a secretly heretical Pope is still Pope. Others teach the same, whom we cite in Book 1 of de Ecclesia. The foundation of this opinion is that a manifest heretic, is in no way a member of the Church; that is, neither in spirit nor in body, or by internal union nor external. For even wicked Catholics are united and are members, in spirit through faith and in body through the confession of faith, and the participation of the visible Sacraments. Secret heretics are united and are members, but only by an external union: just as on the other hand, good Catechumens are in the Church only by an internal union but not an external one. Manifest heretics by no union, as has been proved.”

I have no explanation as to why Saint Robert Bellarmine's referring to the fifth opinion as true continues to be ignored, especially since truth alone must guide us, and the truth about that the See of Peter is vacant in the case of heresy was stated clearly nineteen years ago by Mario Francesco "Cardinal" Pompedda:

It is true that the canonical doctrine states that the see would be vacant in the case of heresy. ... But in regard to all else, I think what is applicable is what judgment regulates human acts. And the act of will, namely a resignation or capacity to govern or not govern, is a human act. (Cardinal Says Pope Could Govern Even If Unable to Speak, Zenit, February 8, 2005.)

"Cardinal" Pompedda was the conciliar prefect of the Apostolic Signatura from November 15, 1999, to May 27, 2004. However, his knowledge about Catholic teaching concerning a papal vacancy continues to be ignored by those who want to ignore anything and everything that can make a papal vacancy caused by heresy a possibility rooted in Catholic teaching and canon law.

Pope Leo XIII Forbade All Public Criticism. Especially by Journalists, of Papal Decisions

Many, although not all, of those in the “resist while recognize” movement held their fire during the “pontificate” of Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI despite his multiple offenses against the honor and glory and majesty of God, his own “papal” embrace of dogmatic evolutionism and his outright denial of the historicity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday and of Saint Peter’s discourse to the Jews on Pentecost Sunday. (Those interested in reviewing the “laundry list” of Ratzinger/Benedict’s multiple defections from the Catholic Faith during his “pontificate should read It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Former Head of a False Religion, part one, It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Former Head of a False Religion, part two, and It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Former Head of a False Religion, part three.)

The “resist while recognize” movement ceased fire because of Summorum Pontificum but resumed fire once it was clear to them what was clear to many of us on March 13, 2013, namely, that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is bereft of the Catholic Faith. Rather than recognize that those who defect from the Faith in only one thing are not Catholics and cannot hold ecclesiastical offices legitimately, though, most in the “resist while recognize” movement have intensified their criticism of “Pope Francis” and many are calling upon him to resign. So much for the following words of Pope Leo XIII:

To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor. In this subordination and dependence lie the order and life of the Church; in it is to be found the indispensable condition of well-being and good government.On the contrary, if it should happen that those who have no right to do so should attribute authority to themselves, if they presume to become judges and teachers, if inferiors in the government of the universal Church attempt or try to exert an influence different from that of the supreme authority, there follows a reversal of the true order, many minds are thrown into confusion, and souls leave the right path . . . .

On this point what must be remembered is that in the government of the Church, except for the essential duties imposed on all Pontiffs by their apostolic office, each of them can adopt the attitude which he judges best according to times and circumstances. Of this he alone is the judge. It is true that for this he has not only special lights, but still more the knowledge of the needs and conditions of the whole of Christendom, for which, it is fitting, his apostolic care must provide. He has the charge of the universal welfare of the Church, to which is subordinate any particular need, and all others who are subject to this order must second the action of the supreme director and serve the end which he has in view. Since the Church is one and her head is one, so, too, her government is one, and all must conform to this.

When these principles are forgotten there is noticed among Catholics a diminution of respect, of veneration, and of confidence in the one given them for a guide; then there is a loosening of that bond of love and submission which ought to bind all the faithful to their pastors, the faithful and the pastors to the Supreme Pastor, the bond in which is principally to be found security and common salvation.

In the same way, by forgetting or neglecting these principles, the door is opened wide to divisions and dissensions among Catholics, to the grave detriment of union which is the distinctive mark of the faithful of Christ, and which, in every age, but particularly today by reason of the combined forces of the enemy, should be of supreme and universal interest, in favor of which every feeling of personal preference or individual advantage ought to be laid aside.

That obligation, if it is generally incumbent on all, is, you may indeed say, especially pressing upon journalists. If they have not been imbued with the docile and submissive spirit so necessary to each Catholic, they would assist in spreading more widely those deplorable matters and in making them more burdensome. The task pertaining to them in all the things that concern religion and that are closely connected to the action of the Church in human society is this: to be subject completely in mind and will, just as all the other faithful are, to their own bishops and to the Roman Pontiff; to follow and make known their teachings; to be fully and willingly subservient to their influence; and to reverence their precepts and assure that they are respected. He who would act otherwise in such a way that he would serve the aims and interests of those whose spirit and intentions We have reproved in this letter would fail the noble mission he has undertaken. So doing, in vain would he boast of attending to the good of the Church and helping her cause, no less than someone who would strive to weaken or diminish Catholic truth, or indeed someone who would show himself to be her overly fearful friend. (Pope Leo XIII, Epistola Tua, June 17, 1885.)

Not only must those be held to fail in their duty who openly and brazenly repudiate the authority of their leaders, but those, too, who give evidence of a hostile and contrary disposition by their clever tergiversations and their oblique and devious dealings. The true and sincere virtue of obedience is not satisfied with words; it consists above all in submission of mind and heart.

But since We are here dealing with the lapse of a newspaper, it is absolutely necessary for Us once more to enjoin upon the editors of Catholic journals to respect as sacred laws the teaching and the ordinances mentioned above and never to deviate from them. Moreover, let them be well persuaded and let this be engraved in their minds, that if they dare to violate these prescriptions and abandon themselves to their personal appreciations, whether in prejudging questions which the Holy See has not yet pronounced on, or in wounding the authority of the Bishops by arrogating to themselves an authority which can never be theirs, let them be convinced that it is all in vain for them to pretend to keep the honor of the name of Catholic and to serve the interests of the very holy and very noble cause which they have undertaken to defend and to render glorious.

Now, We, exceedingly desirous that any who have strayed return to soundness of mind and that deference to the sacred Bishops inhere deeply in the hearts of all men, in the Lord We bestow an Apostolic Blessing upon you, Venerable Brother, and to all your clergy and people, as a token of Our fatherly good will and charity. (Pope Leo XIII, Est Sane Molestum, December 17, 1888. The complete text may be found at: Est Sane Molestum, December 17, 1888. See also Pope Leo XIII Quashes Popular “Resist-And-Recognize Position.)

As far as I am aware, no one in the “resist while recognize” movement has of yet “recognized” that Epistola Tua and Est Sane Molestum even exist, no less that each condemns the false assertion that one can openly criticize a true pope on matters of Faith and Morals. Both of these apostolic letters were entered into Pope Leo XIII’s Acta Apostolicae Sedis and are thus binding upon the consciences of every single Catholic around the world without any reservations, exceptions or qualifications whatsoever.

As the Shoddy Tricks of Minimism Continue

The fact remains, however, that the See of Saint Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, because the men who have laid claim to the papacy had expelled themselves from the bosom of Holy Mother Church long before their apparent elections. Catholics cannot excuse themselves from obeying a true pontiff and reverencing his person by such obedience.

The late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, the esteemed theologian who was the editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review from an 1943 to 1963, provided a a ringing condemnation of the false proposition that one can "ignore," no less seek to "refute," anything contained in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, in which a true pope causes to be published therein:

The text of the Humani generis itself supplies us with a minimum answer. This is found in the sentence we have already quoted: "And if, in their 'Acta,' the Supreme Pontiffs take care to render a decision on a point that has hitherto been controverted, it is obvious to all that this point, according to the mind and will of these same Pontiffs, can no longer be regarded as a question theologians may freely debate among themselves."

Theologians legitimately discuss and dispute among themselves doctrinal questions which the authoritative magisterium of the Catholic Church has not as yet resolved. Once that magisterium has expressed a decision and communicated that decision to the Church universal, the first and the most obvious result of its declaration must be the cessation of debate on the point it has decided. A man definitely is not acting and could not act as a theologian, as a teacher of Catholic truth, by disputing against a decision made by the competent doctrinal authority of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth.

Thus, according to the clear teaching of the Humani generis, it is morally wrong for any individual subject to the Roman Pontiff to defend a thesis contradicting a teaching which the Pope, in his "Acta," has set forth as a part of Catholic doctrine. It is, in other words, wrong to attack a teaching which, in a genuine doctrinal decision, the Sovereign Pontiff has taught officially as the visible head of the universal Church. This holds true always an everywhere, even in those cases in which the Pope, in making his decision, did not exercise the plenitude of his apostolic teaching power by making an infallible doctrinal definition.

The Humani generis must not be taken to imply that a Catholic theologian has completed his obligation with respect to an authoritative doctrinal decision made by the Holy Father and presented in his published "Acta" when he has merely refrained from arguing or debating against it. The Humani generis reminded its readers that "this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth for any theologian in matters of faith and morals."[9] Furthermore, it insisted that the faithful are obligated to shun errors which more or less approach heresy, and "to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See."[10] In other words, the Humani generis claimed the same internal assent for declarations of the magisterium on matters of faith and morals which previous documents of the Holy See had stressed.

We may well ask why the Humani generis went to the trouble of mentioning something as fundamental and rudimentary as the duty of abstaining from further debate on a point where the Roman Pontiff has already issued a doctrinal decision, and has communicated that decision to the Church universal by publishing it in his "Acta." The reason is to be found in the context of the encyclical itself. The Holy Father has told us something of the existing situation which called for the issuance of the "Humani generis." This information is contained in the text of that document. The following two sentences show us the sort of condition the Humani generis was written to meet and to remedy:

"And although this sacred magisterium ought to be the immediate and universal norm of truth on matters of faith and morals for any theologian, as the agency to which Christ the Lord has entrusted the entire deposit of faith - that is, the Sacred Scriptures and divine Tradition - to be guarded and defended and explained, still, the duty by which the faithful are obligated also to shun those errors which approach more or less to heresy, and therefore 'to follow the constitutions and decrees by which evil opinions of this sort have been proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See,' is sometimes ignored as if it did not exist. What is said in encyclical letters of the Roman Pontiffs about the nature and constitution of the Church is habitually and deliberately neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they claim to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks."[11]

Six years ago, then, Pope Pius XII was faced with a situation in which some of the men who were privileged and obligated to teach the truths of sacred theology had perverted their position and their influence and had deliberately flouted the teachings of the Holy See about the nature and the constitution of the Catholic Church. And, when he declared that it is wrong to debate a point already decided by the Holy Father after that decision has been published in his "Acta," he was taking cognizance of and condemning an existent practice. There actually were individuals who were contradicting papal teachings. They were so numerous and influential that they rendered the composition of the Humani generis necessary to counteract their activities. These individuals were continuing to propose teachings repudiated by the Sovereign Pontiff in previous pronouncements. The Holy Father, then, was compelled by these circumstances to call for the cessation of debate among theologians on subjects which had already been decided by pontifical decisions published in the "Acta."

The kind of theological teaching and writing against which the encyclical Humani generis was directed was definitely not remarkable for its scientific excellence. It was, as a matter of fact, exceptionally poor from the scientific point of view. The men who were responsible for it showed very clearly that they did not understand the basic nature and purpose of sacred theology. For the true theologian the magisterium of the Church remains, as the Humani generis says, the immediate and universal norm of truth. And the teaching set forth by Pope Pius IX in his Tuas libenter is as true today as it always has been.

But when we treat of that subjection by which all Catholic students of speculative sciences are obligated in conscience so that they bring new aids to the Church by their writings, the men of this assembly ought to realize that it is not enough for Catholic scholars to receive and venerate the above-mentioned dogmas of the Church, but [they ought also to realize] that they must submit to the doctrinal decisions issued by the Pontifical Congregations and also to those points of doctrine which are held by the common and constant agreement of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions which are so certain that, even though the opinions opposed to them cannot be called heretical, they still deserve some other theological censure.[12]

It is definitely the business of the writer in the field of sacred theology to benefit the Church by what he writes. It is likewise the duty of the teacher of this science to help the Church by his teaching. The man who uses the shoddy tricks of minimism to oppose or to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down in his "Acta" is, in the last analysis, stultifying his position as a theologian. (The doctrinal Authority of Papal allocutions.)

Are there any further questions about the binding nature of what a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter places in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton denounced "the shoddy tricks of minimism to ignore the doctrinal decisions made by the Sovereign Pontiff and set down his his 'Acta'."

The same shoddy tricks of minimism that were being used by the likes of Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., and the "new theologians," including Father Joseph Ratzinger, in the 1950s that prompted Pope Pius XII to issue Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, have been employed for the past fifty years or more have been used during that same time frame with ever-increasing boldness by those seeking to claim the absolutely nonexistent ability to ignore and/or refute the teaching of men they have recognized to be a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter. I know. I contributed to that literature for a while. I was wrong. So are those who continue to persist in their willful, stubborn rejection of the binding nature of all that is contained in the Universal Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church even though if not declared infallible in a solemn manner.

The authority of Pope Pius IX and the [First] Vatican Council must be rejected for one to seek the "minimize" the scope of obedience Catholics must pay to a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter:

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. (Pope Pius IX, Pastor Aeternus, Vatican Council, July 18, 1870.)

This condemns the "Roman Protestants," if you will, of the "resist while recognize movement" while at the same time condemning the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his predecessors, including "Saint John Paul II" and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who have sought "new ways" in which the "Petrine Ministry" can be exercised to the satisfaction of Protestants and the Orthodox.

There can be, however, no such thing as "pope sifting" or "council sifting," whether it is done by the conciliar "popes" under one aegis or another (Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II's "living tradition" or Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's "hermeneutic of continuity") or by those in the "resist while recognize movement."

Anyone who claims that the Catholic Church can be responsible for the heresies, apostasies, blasphemies, sacrileges, and errors of her counterfeit ape, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, has been infected by the spirit of Gallicanism that is at the heart of the “resist while recognize” movement of which Father Carlo Maria Vigano is part.

Pope Saint Pius X put the matter very directly, and it applies to every Catholic no matter where they fall along the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide at this time of apostasy and betrayal:

And how must the Pope be loved? Non verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. [Not in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth - 1 Jn iii, 18] When one loves a person, one tries to adhere in everything to his thoughts, to fulfill his will, to perform his wishes. And if Our Lord Jesus Christ said of Himself, “si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit,” [if any one love me, he will keep my word - Jn xiv, 23] therefore, in order to demonstrate our love for the Pope, it is necessary to obey him.

Therefore, when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey – that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.

This is the cry of a heart filled with pain, that with deep sadness I express, not for your sake, dear brothers, but to deplore, with you, the conduct of so many priests, who not only allow themselves to debate and criticize the wishes of the Pope, but are not embarrassed to reach shameless and blatant disobedience, with so much scandal for the good and with so great damage to souls. (Pope Saint Pius X, Allocution Vi ringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union, November 18, 1912, as found at: (“Love the Pope!” – no ifs, and no buts: For Bishops, priests, and faithful, Saint Pius X explains what loving the Pope really entails.)

Whoever is holy cannot dissent from the pope.

This means that those who dissent from “Pope Francis” in the belief that he is a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter are not holy or that “Pope Francis” is no pope at all as it would never be necessary to oppose him and to dissent from his false teachings if he were such.

There is little else to write except for the fact that those who staddle the “conservative”/ traditionalist divide, especially at Lifesite News who published the Vigano/Marco Tosatti letters and commentaries, who have the pronounced capacity to correctly criticize a complete tool of the homosexual collective, John Stowe, the conciliar “bishop” of Lexington, Kentucky, for defending a mutant who believes she is a man and who has started a “hermitage” with his personal approval:

(LifeSiteNews) — In a statement released Tuesday, the Diocese of Lexington, headed by heterodox Bishop John Stowe, doubled down on referring to the woman who calls herself a man and lives as a “diocesan hermit” as a man named “Brother Christian Matson.”

“On Pentecost Sunday, Brother Christian Matson, a professed hermit in the Diocese of Lexington, has made it public that he (sic) is a transgender person. Brother Christian has long sought to consecrate his life to Christ in the Church by living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience,” the diocese wrote.

“He has consistently been accompanied by a competent spiritual director and has undergone formation in the Benedictine tradition. He does not seek ordination but has professed a rule of life that allows him to support himself financially by continuing his work in the arts and to live a life of contemplation in a private hermitage,” the diocese continued.

“Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., accepted his profession and is grateful to Brother Christian for his witness of discipleship, integrity and contemplative prayer for the Church,” it aThe doubling down comes after “Brother” Christian Cole Matson, born Nicole Matson, told Religion News Service (RNS) on Friday, “This Sunday, Pentecost 2024, I’m planning to come out publicly as transgender,” adding that she has the permission of Bishop Stowe to publicly share this information.

The news that Matson is in fact a woman came as a surprise to many of her acquaintances, since her voice and appearance are that of a man, and she has not often disclosed the fact that she is a biological female. In 2015, EWTN interviewed Matson, who has developed strong ties to Catholic actors and artists, about her conversion to Catholicism, apparently without knowing the truth behind “Cole’s” masculine appearance.

Matson, 39, who was raised Presbyterian, explained to RNS that she “converted” to Catholicism four years after her “sex change” in college, which she referred to as part of her “medical history” rather than a “central part” of her “personal identity.” After her “conversion,” she “felt called to minister to those involved in the arts,” according to RNS, but anticipated obstacles to this aspiration because of the 2000 Vatican document that declared that anyone who has had a “sex change” is ineligible “to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life.”

It should be noted that Matson continues to embrace her “trans” identity even after her “conversion.” She argues that the Catholic Church “can embrace transgender people while maintaining orthodoxy,” and that “Vatican-level documents that have come out on the subject have not engaged with the science at all,” according to RNS.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Mother Therese Ivers, a canon lawyer, confirmed that it is canonically impossible for a “transsexual” person to live as a religious or in any ecclesial state.

According to Ivers, a transsexual commits a “very grave violation” against chastity, not in the sense that chastity is normally understood, but in reference to the fact that transsexuals “act against biological reality” and “against the type of human person that God intended that person to be.”

“A violation against the vow of chastity can include bodily mutilation and encouraging others to do the same. Such a sin would be morally grave in nature – we are not judging the soul – and would also incur sacrilege because it goes against the promise made to God (virtue of religion),” she added.

She further explained that while the whole point of religious life and vows to poverty, chastity and obedience are to grow “closer to Christ” and increase charity for “the people of God,” the use of such a religious life to advocate for a transsexual lifestyle, which “actually brings people away from that closeness to God,” is contrary to that aim. (Diocese of Lexington doubles down on referring to female 'hermit' as 'he,' 'Brother')

Obviously, John Stowe is completely and very predictably wrong.

However, so was one of Lifesite News’s favorite “cardinals,” Raymond Leo “Cardinal” Burke, when news of his having permitted a mutant who called himself “Julie Green” to start a convent in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, when he was the conciliar “bishop” there:

At times his theological allegiance with these orders placed Bishop Burke in some compromising positions. Most striking, perhaps, was the case of Sister Julie Green, a member of the Franciscan Servants of Jesus:

"Julie Green is living a lie!" writes Mary Therese Helmueller in an October 25, 2002, letter to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, Papal Nuncio to the United States. "[She] is a transsexual, a biological male. He is really Joel Green, who had a sex operation to make him physically appear as a woman.... I fear that The Church in America will suffer another 'sex scandal' if Julie Green continues to be recognized as a Catholic Religious Sister, and if Bishop Raymond L. Burke receives his final vows, as a religious sister, on November 23rd, 2002."

Montalvo forwarded the letter to Burke, who on November 20, 2002, replied to Helmueller. "With regard to Sister Julie Green, F.S.J., the recognition of the association of the faithful which she and Sister Anne LeBlanc founded was granted only after consultation with the Holy See," he writes. "These are matters which are confidential and do not admit of any further comment.... I can assure you that Sister Julie Green in no way espouses a sex change operation as right or good. In fact, she holds it to be seriously disordered. Therefore, I caution you very much about the rash judgments which you made in your letter to the Apostolic Nuncio."

Adds Burke: "I express my surprise that, when you had questions about Sister Julie Green, you did not, in accord with the teaching of our Lord, address the matter to me directly." (Bishop Takes Queen.)

While it is nice that Joel Green believed the surgery that he had to become “Julie Green” is “seriously disordered,” such a disavowal does not annul the fact that he had underwent such surgery himself and was presenting himself as a woman, no less a woman desirous of starting a religious community within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism within the Diocese of La Crosse with the approval of a man, Raymond Leo Burke, whom Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict transferred to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, Missouri, and later brought him to Rome and elevated him the conciliar "college of cardinals."

This is very similar to the case of Nicole Matson in the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, but there was no mention of this whatsoever in the Lifesite News report as it has protecting Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s critics from doing things that the “progressives” keep doing has long been on the staples of the resist while recognize enterprise.

While coming to recognize the true state of the Church Militant during this time of apostasy makes no one, especially this writer, one whit better than anyone who does not accept the fact that the See of Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, it nevertheless remains a fact that the contentions made by those who persist in the “recognize and resist” Gallicanism today are based in a “suicidal” selectivity that has done almost as much, if not more, damage to the respect, filial devotion and obedience due a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter than have the conciliar “popes” themselves.

We to pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary and to be forever mindful of our total consecration to her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to persist in the truth despite our own sins and, quite perhaps, our failure to be the best witnesses in behalf of the truth, and to thus have access to the true Sacraments now, and at the hour of our death.

On the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury

The lives of so many of the saints who have been raised to the altars by Holy Mother Church are themselves testimony to the integrity and immutability of Catholic doctrine that has been reaffirmed by one true pope after another as circumstances required in the two centuries leading up to the death of our last true pope, Pope Pius XII, on October 9, 1958. Three of Holy Mother Church’s saints whose feasts have been celebrated or commemorated in the past two days are Saint Bede the Venerable, Pope Saint John I and today’s Apostle to England, Saint Augustine of Canterbury. The life of each of these states provide proof of the apostate nature of the conciliar “popes,” their heretical doctrines, their dismissal of both Sacred Tradition as well as Holy Mother Church’s well-established traditions, “innovative” deconstructions of Sacred Scripture, sacrilegious and invalid liturgical rites, corrupt and decade moral theologies and pastoral practices that would even make many of the pagans of ancient Greece and Rome blush.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury was, as noted just above, the Apostle to England, and he was sent there by his fellow Benedictine, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, to evangelize a land whose Catholic Faith, which had been established in Britain by Pope Saint Eleutherius in the Second Century A.D., had been decimated by the invasions by the Angles and the Saxons. The hagiography found in Matins for the Divine Office on the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury provides the account:

Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Apostle of the English, was sent into England by blessed Gregory, and came thither in the year 597. At that time there was in Kent a most mighty king named Ethelbert, whose power reached even to the Humber. When this King had heard wherefore the holy man was come, he received him kindly, and bade him and his companions, who were all monks, to come to his own capital city of Canterbury being struck with astonishment at the perfect blamelessness of their lives, and the power of the heavenly doctrine which they preached, and which God confirmed with signs following.

They drew nigh to the city in solemn procession, singing the Litany, and bearing before them for their standard a silver cross and a picture of the Lord our Saviour painted on a panel. Hard by the city, upon the east side, there was a Church builded of old time in honour of St. Martin, and wherein the Queen, who was a Christian, was used to pray. There they first began to meet together, to sing, to pray, to celebrate Masses, to preach, and to baptize, until the King was turned to the faith, and the most part of his people were led by his example, (but not his authority,) to take the name of Christian, for he had learnt from his teachers and his own soul's physicians, that men are to be drawn, and not driven to heaven. And now Augustine, being ordained Archbishop of the English and of Britain, lest he should leave untravailed any part of the Lord's vineyard, asked from the Apostolic See a new band of labourers, Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinian.

Having arranged the affairs of his church, Augustine held a synod with the bishops and doctors of the ancient Britons, who had long been at variance with the Roman Church in the celebration of Easter and other rites. But since he could not move them, either by the authority of the apostolic see or by miracles, to put an end to these variations, in a prophetic spirit he foretold their ruin. At length, after having endured many difficulties for Christ, and having become noted for miracles, when he had placed Mellitus in charge of the church of London, Justus of that of Rochester, and Laurence in charge of his own church, he passed to heaven on the 26th day of May, in the reign of Ethelbert, and was buried in the monastery of St. Peter, which thereafter became the burying-place of the bishops of Canterbury and of some kings. The English people honoured his memory with fervent zeal; and the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII extended his Office and Mass to the universal Church. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury.)

Writing before Pope Leo XIII extended the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to the universal Church and moved it from a concelebration with Saint Philip Neri and Pope Saint Eleutherius, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., connected Saint Augustine of Canterbury’s reconquering of England for Christ the King and His true Church with rejection of the Holy Faith by the English people after the revolution inaugurated by the lecherous, murderous lout named King Henry VIII and then institutionalized by his daughter by the nefarious Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I:

Four hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the glorious death of Eleutherius, when a second Apostle of Britain ascended from this world, and on this same day, to the abode of eternal bliss. We cannot but be struck by the fact that the names of our two Apostles appear on the Calendar together: it shows us that God has his own special reasons in fixing the day for the death of each one among us. We have more than once noticed these providential coincidences, which form one of the chief characteristics of the liturgical cycle. What a beautiful sight is brought before us to-day, of the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who, after honouring on this day the saintly memory of the holy Pontiff from whom England first received the Gospel, himself ascended into heaven, and shared with Eleutherius the eternity of heaven’s joy! Who would not acknowledge in this, a pledge of he predilection wherewith heaven has favoured this country, which, after centuries of fidelity to the truth, has now for more than three hundred years been an enemy to her own truest glory?

The work begun by Eleutherius had been almost entirely destroyed by the invasion of the Saxons and Angles; so that a new mission, a preaching of the Gospel, had become a necessity. It was Rome that again supplied the want. St. Gregory the Great was the originator of the great design. Had it been permitted hm, he would have taken upon himself the fatigues of the apostolate to our country. He was deeply impressed with the idea that he was to be the spiritual Father of these poor islanders, some of whom he had seen exposed in the market-place of Rome, that they might be sold as slaves. Not being allowed to undertake the work himself, he looked around him for men whom he might send as Apostles to our island. He found them in the Benedictine monastery where he himself had spent several years of his life. There started from Rome forty monks, with Augustine at their head, and they entered England under the standard of the Cross.

Thus the new race that then peopled the island received the faith, as the Britons had previously done, from the hands of a Pope; and monks were their teachers in the science of salvation. The word of Augustine and his companions fructified in this privileged soil. It was some time of course before he could provide the whole nations with instruction; but neither Rome nor the Benedictines abandoned the work thus begun. The few remnants that were still left of the ancient British Christianity joined the new converts; and England merited to be call, for long ages, the ‘Island of Saints.’

The history of St. Augustine’s apostolate in England is of thrilling interest. The landing of the Roman missioners and their marching through the country, to the chant of the Litany; the willing and almost kind welcome given them by king Ethelbert; the influence exercised by his queen Bertha, who was a French-woman and a Catholic, in the establishment of the faith among the Saxons; the baptism of ten thousand neophytes, on Christmas day, and in the bed of a river; the foundation of the metropolitan see of Canterbury, one of the most illustrious Churches of Christendom on account of the holiness and noble doings of its Archbishops; all these admirable episodes of England’s conversion are eloquent proofs of God’s predilection of our dear land. Augustine’s peaceful and gentle character, together with his love of contemplation amidst his arduous missionary labours, gives an additional charm in this magnificent page of the Church’s history. But who can help feeling sad at the thought that a country, favoured as ours has been with such graces should have apostatized from the faith; have repaid with hatred that Rome which made her Christian; and have persecuted with unheard-of-cruelties the Benedictine Order to which she owed so much of her glory? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 604-606.)

The legacy of Saint Augustine of Canterbury has been rejected by the people of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. While it is true enough that many of those who apostatized did so out of fear of incurring Henry VIII and his bought-and-paid-for minions, the Protestant Revolution took hold in a short space of time, and it was within that short space of time that the once proudly Catholics of England came to “burn what they once adored.” A furious, passionate hatred for the Catholic Church became, in turn, a “tradition” of its own.

The conciliar “popes” have even spoken of the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect as one of three parts of “the Christian Faith, which some, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, believe consists of the “Roman Christianity,” “the Reformed Ecclesiastical Communities,” “the Anglican Tradition” and “Orthodoxy.” Martyrs died to defend the true Faith from the apostasies of the Greeks, the “reformers” (Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.) and the Anglicans. Their martyrdom is held to be of no account even to the conciliar “popes” who have either “beatified” or “canonized” them.

This is what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI said to Archlayman Michael Ramsey on March 24, 1966, the Feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel, when the two first met:

In this city of Rome, from which St. Augustine was sent by St. Gregory to England and there founded the cathedral see of Canterbury, towards which the eyes of all Anglicans now turn as the centre of their Christian Communion, His Holiness Pope Paul VI and His Grace Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, representing the Anglican Communion, have met to exchange fraternal greetings.

At the conclusion of their meeting they give thanks to Almighty God who by the action of the Holy Spirit has in these latter years created a new atmosphere of Christian fellowship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion.

This encounter of the 23rd March 1966 marks a new stage in the development of fraternal relations, based upon Christian charity, and of sincere efforts to remove the causes of conflict and to re-establish unity.

In willing obedience to the command of Christ who bade his disciples love one another, they declare that, with His help, they wish to leave in the hands of the God of mercy all that in the past has been opposed to this precept of charity, and that they make their own the mind of the Apostle which he expressed in these words: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3, 13-14).

They affirm their desire that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect, esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the Gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed.

The dialogue should include not only theological matters such as Scripture, Tradition and Liturgy, but also matters of practical difficulty felt on either side. His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury are, indeed, aware that serious obstacles stand in the way of a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life; nevertheless, they are of one mind in their determination to promote responsible contacts between their Communions in all those spheres of Church life where collaboration is likely to lead to a greater understanding and a deeper charity, and to strive in common to find solutions for all the great problems that face those who believe in Christ in the world of today.

Through such collaboration, by the grace of God the Father and in the light of the Holy Spirit, may the prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ for unity among His disciples be brought nearer to fulfilment, and with progress towards unity may there be a strengthening of peace in the world, the peace that only He can grant who gives "the peace that passeth all understanding", together with the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that it may abide with all men for ever. (Common Declaration of Paul the Sick and Layman Arthur Michael Ramsey.)

The cause of the "conflict" between the Anglican sect and the Catholic Church was the declaration that was passed by the English Parliament at the command of King Henry VIII stating that he was the supreme head of the Church in England, thereby permitting him to marry his mistress, the plotting, scheming Anne Boleyn. The Anglican sect started as a result of the carnal lust of a debauched man, Henry Tudor, who was egged on by disciples of the heretic Martin Luther such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

The false, heretical and schismatic Anglican sect thus has no right from God to exist. While individual adherents of Anglicanism must convert to the true Faith to save their immortal souls, an expressed desire to "re-establish unity" admits that the Anglican sect is a legitimate church that simply lacks what the conciliar revolutionaries call "full communion."

Moreover, Paul The Sick gave his own episcopal ring to Arthur Michael Ramsey, who did not use his first name in most instances, thereby signifying, at least in a de facto manner that he, Ramsey, was a true Successor of the Apostles, and that the principal "difficulty" that had to be overcome was Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curiae, September 15, 1896, that declared Anglican orders null and void. Paul The Sick even went so far as to do something that his predecessor in apostasy, Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, did not do when he met Ramsey's predecessor, layman Geoffrey Fisher, privately in the Vatican on December 2, 1960: prompt the Anglican layman to give a "joint blessing" with him.

Consider the recollection of an English Catholic seminarian of this this moment in ecumaniacal history:

It was within this context that Archbishop Ramsey arrived in Rome in March 1966 and, together with his colleagues, stayed with us at the English College. He was received as a friend and fellow Christian - a welcome that blew to bits many of the preconceptions of my upbringing.

I received an invitation to the service in the Sistine Chapel at which the pope and the archbishop presided together. You have to imagine the scale of something like this, in which we witnessed the pope in the Sistine Chapel sharing the presiding role with a non-Catholic. And I had a splendid vantage point. As young clerics, some of us enjoyed playing games in the Vatican, such as weaseling our way into the private areas without getting stopped. The way to do this was to walk around as if you owned the place and knew exactly where you were going. On this occasion, I noticed two spare seats in the second row with all the ambassadors, made for them with confidence and sat down.

I recall the end of the service. The pope stepped up to give his blessing, and clearly this part of the ceremony had not been rehearsed. He then signalled to Archbishop Ramsey, who was next to him at the altar, to give the blessing with him. Archbishop Ramsey was a bit nonplussed, and there may have been a language problem in the pope's request. The pope then calmly took hold of Archbishop Ramsey's arm and moved it into a blessing. The message got through!

I remember too the mighty banquet mounted by the Vatican to celebrate the visit at the English College. Even then, we felt caviar was a little "over the top" and something simpler would have reflected better the beautiful simplicity of the service in the Sistine Chapel. However, I suppose it was the Vatican's way of recognising the importance of the meeting.

On 24 March a public service was held at San Paolo fuori le Mura. Again the service was presided over jointly by the pope and the archbishop. But it was the scene outside the church after the service that has stayed in my memory and that of many others who were there at the time. The church was packed. Not only were there the many representatives of the English Catholic and Anglican Churches, but also many Italians, who were keen to see the pope and this unknown English figure with whom the pope was spending a lot of time. I can picture now the scene in the massive courtyard of St Paul's as the pope and the archbishop left the basilica. They found themselves surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic and curious people. As he was about to bid farewell to the archbishop, the pope took off the ring he was wearing and placed it on the archbishop's hand. The pope was then swiftly whisked off into his car to take him back to the Vatican, leaving the archbishop standing alone in the midst of the crowd.

This simple gesture from the pope moved him to tears. Still surrounded by countless local people, the archbishop gave his blessing amid the tears. Later, we all gathered in the English College courtyard to bid farewell to the archbishop and his colleagues. The Senior Student asked the archbishop to give us his blessing. We all knelt down to receive it. As you read this you are probably thinking this was no big deal. But this was 1966 and here were 90 Catholic seminarians in Rome, all in their cassocks, kneeling down to receive the blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have to tell you we all felt a bit mischievous. Indeed we very much hoped the press would pick up on this event. We wanted our own bishops to see it, since at the time they were not "up to speed" on ecumenism. Like the students of the 1960s we were rebellious, and this felt like our own rebellion. Unfortunately, all the journalists were already at Fiumicino Airport awaiting the archbishop's arrival, so our misdemeanours went unreported. (Alive At The Dawn?)

The meeting between the heretic Ramsey and the apostate [the conciliar revolutionaries have rejected the Catholic Faith as It has been handed down to us through the centuries of have boasted of a "new church" that can be understood in "light of tradition"] Montini/Paul The Sick occurred as the ecumania was being celebrated by agents of Antichrist everywhere.

Indeed, The Catholic Courier, the diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, ran the following story in its Thursday, January 21, 1965, edition:

For the first time in more than 400 years, a Roman Catholic priest is officiating this week at services in St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, Rochester, England.

The ancient cathedral, once the seat of the bishopric of St. John Fisher, now patron of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., was taken over by the Church of England at the time of the Reformation.

Father John Burke, pastor of the church of St. John Fisher, Rochester, Kent, England, disclosed in a recent letter to Very Rev. Charles J. Lavery, C.S.R., president of St. John Fisher College that he would participate in the history-making event.

"The British hierarchy," he wrote, "have given us permission to accept invitations to take part in non-Eucharistic services in non-Catholic churches, and I have been invited by the Dean of Rochester to preach in the Cathedral Crypt here during the Unity Octave Week Jan. 18 to 25. It will be the first time that a Catholic priest has officiated within these walls since the days of St. John Fisher. It is something that I feel excited about."

Bishop Kearney authorized a diocesan-wide special collection in 1952 which realized $30.000 for the construction and outfitting of a church honoring the martyred St. John Fisher in "Old Rochester," a small town 30 miles from London, which had not had a Catholic church since Henry VIII confiscated the cathedral and put its bishop to death.

Students of St. John Fisher College here purchased a chalice for the new church, which opened in 1953. (The Catholic Church, Thursday, January 21, 1965, p. 1. See A Catholic Voice Returns to John Fisher's Liturgy.)

Although this article was written in a spirit of full support for ecumania, it was nonetheless more honest about the causes of the "conflict" between Anglicans and Catholics than was reflected in the "joint declaration" issued after the meeting of Giovanni Montini/Paul The Sick and Arthur Michael Ramsey.

Each of the conciliar “popes” has made a mockery of the martyrdom of the English and Irish martyrs as they have celebrated the “tradition” of a false religious sect that was built on their blood and upon the forcible confiscation, seizure, plundering and destruction of Catholic churches, convents, monasteries, schools, shrines and even cemeteries.

The Catholic Church, however, has spoken about Anglicanism and any attempts to find “common ground” with it as it is a false religion that must cease to exist as its relatively few remaining members, most of which are “low church” and are “baptized pagans” in many instances, convert to her own maternal bosom, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order:

It has been made known to the Apostolic See that some Catholic laymen and ecclesiastics have enrolled in a society to "procure" as they say, the unity of Christianity, established at London in the year 1857, and that already many journalistic articles have been published, which are signed by the names of Catholics approving this society, or which are shown to be the work of churchmen commending this same society.

But certainly, I need not say what the nature of this society is, and whither it is tending; this is easily understood from the articles of the newspaper entitled THE UNION REVIEW, and from that very page on which members are invited and listed. Indeed, formed and directed by Protestants, it is animated by that spirit which expressly avows for example, that the three Christian communions, Roman Catholic, Greekschismatic, and Anglican, however separated and divided from one another, nevertheless with equal right claim for themselves the name Catholic. Admission, therefore, into that society is open to all, wheresoever they may live, Catholics, Greek-schismatics, and Anglicans, under this condition, however, that no one is permitted to raise a question about the various forms of doctrine in which they disagree, and that it is right for each individual to follow with tranquil soul what is acceptable to his own religious creed. Indeed, the society itself indicates to all its members the prayers to be recited, and to the priests the sacrifices to be celebrated according to its own intention: namely, that the said three Christian communions, inasmuch as they, as it is alleged, together now constitute the Catholic Church, may at some time or other unite to form one body. . . .

The foundation on which this society rests is of such a nature that it makes the divine establishment of the Church of no consequence. For, it is wholly in this: that it supposes the true Church of Jesus Christ to be composed partly of the Roman Church scattered and propagated throughout the whole world, partly, indeed, of the schism of Photius, and of the Anglican heresy, to which, as well as to the Roman Church, "there is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism" [cf. Eph. 4:5].

Surely nothing should be preferable to a Catholic man than that schisms and dissensions among Christians be torn out by the roots and that all Christians be "careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" [Eph. 4:3]. . . . But, that the faithful of Christ and the clergy should pray for Christian unity under the leadership of heretics, and, what is worse, according to an intention, polluted and infected as much as possible with heresy, can in no way be tolerated.

The true Church of Jesus Christ was established by divine authority, and is known by a fourfold mark, which we assert in the Creed must be believed; and each one of these marks so clings to the others that it cannot be separated from them; hence it happens that that Church which truly is, and is called Catholic should at the same time shine with the prerogatives of unity, sanctity, and apostolic succession. Therefore, the Catholic Church alone is conspicuous and perfect in the unity of the whole world and of all nations, particularly in that unity whose beginning, root, and unfailing origin are that supreme authority and "higher principality'' of blessed PETER, the prince of the Apostles, and of his successors in the Roman Chair. No other Church is Catholic except the one which, founded on the one PETER, grows into one "body compacted and fitly joined together" [Eph. 4:] in the unity of faith and charity. . . .

Therefore, the faithful should especially shun this London society, because those sympathizing with it favor indifferentism and engender scandal. (Pope Pius IX, The Unity of the Church. From the letter of the Sacred Office to the Bishops of England, September 26, 1864, as found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma, by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, Nos. 1685-168, pp. 428-429.)

What the Holy Office said in 1864 could not be tolerated is now taught by the lords of conciliarism, and it should say something to those in the conciliar structures who believe that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is "Pope Francis" that he does not believe that the "Catholic Church alone is conspicuous and perfect in the unity of the whole world and of all nations." This should help those who see that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is heretic to see beyond that, recognizing much importantly that the heretic Bergoglio is simply the current head of the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church that teaches doctrines and engages in practices that have been condemned by our true popes with one voice--una voce--from time immemorial.

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer in honor of Saint Augustine of Canterbury speaks directly about the glories of Catholic England before its subsequent decimation by hateful heretics:

O Jesus, our Risen Lord! Thou art the life of nations, as thou art the life of our souls. Thou biddest them know and love and serve thee, for they have been given to thee for thine inheritance.; and at thine own appointed time, each of them made is made thy possession. Our own dear country was one of the earliest to be called; and when on thy Cross thou didst look with mercy on this far off island of the West. In the second Age of thy Church, thou didst send to her the heralds of thy Gospel; and again in the sixth, Augustine, thine Apostle, commissioned by Gregory, thy Vicar, came to teach the way of truth to the new pagan race that had made itself the owner of this highly favoured land.

How glorious dear Jesus, was thy reign in our fatherland! Thou gavest her bishops, doctors, kings, monks, and virgins, whose virtues, and works made the whole the whole world speak of her as the ‘Isle of Saints’; and it is to Augustine, thy discipline herald, that thou wouldst have us attribute the chief part of the honour of so grand a conquest. Long indeed was thy reign over this people, whose faith was lauded throughout the whole world: but alas! An evil hour came, and England rebelled against thee; she would not have thee to reign over her. By her influence, she led other nations the greater part of the truths thou hast revealed to men; she put out the light of faith, and substituted in its place of principles of private judgment, which mad rage of her heresy, she trampled beneath her feet and burned the relics of the Saints, who were her grandest glory; she annihilated the Monastic Order, to which we owed her knowledge of the Christian faith, she was drunk with the blood of the martyrs; she encouraged apostasy, and punished adhesion to the ancient faith as the greatest of crimes. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, p. 611.)

The same thing has happened within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, of course. The mad rage of heresy has caused the conciliar revolutionaries to trample everything evocative of Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals underfoot and to quite literally burn and smash Catholic altars and statues and to disparage Catholic Tradition as composed of little other than mythology and superstition. The conciliar revolutionaries have committed and encouraged apostasy, and they do indeed still punish adhesion to “the ancient faith as the greatest of crimes.”

Returning to Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer in honor of Saint Augustine of Canterbury:

By a just judgment of God she has become a worshipper of material prosperity. Her wealth, her fleet, and her colonies—these are her idols, and she would awe the rest of the world by the power they give her. But the Lord will in his own time overthrow this colossus of power and riches; and as it was in times past, when the mightiest of kingdoms was destroyed by a stone which struck it on its feet of clay, so will people be amazed, when the time of retribution comes, to find how easily the greatest of modern nations was conquered and humbled. England no longer forms a part of thy kingdom, O Jesus! She separated herself from it, by breaking the bond that had held her so long in union with thy Church. Thou hast patiently waited for her return; yet she returns not. Her prosperity is a scandal to the weak; so that her own best and most devoted children feel that her chastisement will be of the severest that thy justice can inflict. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, p. 611.)

This describes the condition of the United States of America from its very inceptions as the first country in the history of the world to have no officially recognized state religion. Materialism is the true god of the United States of America, and paganism, which is ultimate fruit of all heresy, is rampant in the United Kingdom, the United States of American and elsewhere in the so-called “civilized” world in which there so many state-sponsored sins against each of the Ten Commandments.

Although Dom Prosper Gueranger had great hopes for England at a time when many Anglicans such as Father Frederick William Faber, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning and John Henry Cardinal Newman, were converting to the true Church, hopes that did not materialize beyond the immediate impact of the Oxford Movement, mainly because of the First World War and the subsequent push in favor of false ecumenism that wound up hijacking the Abbot of Solesmes own Liturgical Movement:

Meanwhile, thy mercy, O Jesus, is winning over thousands of her people to the truth, and their love of it seems fervent in proportion to their having been long deprived of its beautiful light. Thou hast created a new people in her very midst, and each year, the number is increasing. Cease not thy merciful worldlings; that thus these faithful ones may once more draw down upon our country the blessing she forfeited when she rebelled against thy Church.

Thy mission, then, O holy Apostle Augustine! is not yet over. The number of the elect is not filled up; and our Lord is gleaning some of these from amidst the tares that cover the land of thy laving labours. May thine intercession obtain for her children those graces which can enlighten the mind and convert the heart. May it remove their prejudices, and give them to see that the Spouse of Jesus is but One, as he himself calls her, that the faith of Gregory and Augustine is still the faith of the Catholic Church at this day; and that three hundred years’ possession could never give heresy any claim to a country which was led astray by seduction and violence, and which has retained so many traces of ancient and deep-rooted Catholicity. (p. 612.)

This is a prayer that is appropriate to pray for the entire Catholic world now, which is replete with [mostly] faux clergy and many members of the laity who, having no memory of the authentic Catholic Church and having been taught to accept false history as the truth about a “past” that is best forgotten and disparaged, are full-throated revolutionaries in their own right. Little by little, though, what is true of all heretical sects is proving true of the conciliar sect as the numbers of its practicing adherents keeps dwindling more and more in the “developed world” while places like Poland and Nigeria provide fertile ground for true Catholic clergy to explain the necessity of abandoning the conciliar cult, which is offensive cult and will collapse of the weight of its own apostasies, heresies, blasphemies and sacrileges sooner or later within the Providence of God.

Although the end of the month of May is but three days away, this is still the month of Our Lady, who appeared to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, for the first time on May 13, 1917. Our trust in Our Lady must be one of childlike simplicity, and our cooperation with the graces won for us by her Divine Son by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow through her own most loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces must be persevering.

We have nothing to fear from the circumstances of the world nor from the double-mindedness of the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Our sins, of course, deserve no better, which is why we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, seeking to live more penitentially so that we do indeed strive for the ideal of Catholic moral life, relying upon the graces Our Lady sends us to avoid the stultifying legalistic minimalism that helped to produce the current ecclesiastical crisis.

We must plant the seeds for true change, the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and thus of the Social Reign of Christ the King, by doing what we can in our own lives to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message as we seek all contact with the revolutionaries who have devastated the Faith.

We can plant the change for true change, that is, of a conversion of all men and their nations to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, by relying upon Our Lady just as Saint Peter did.

What are we waiting for?

Our Lady is waiting to help us.

Why do we tarry to trust in her loving care?

Why do refuse to believe that the path out of this mess runs through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart?

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

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.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us.

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