Antichrist Has Shown Us His Calling Card

The writing of this commentary began on the Feast of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, the Protomartyr of the Capuchin branch of the Orders of Friars Minor. As noted in reflection on his life that was republished on Tuesday April 24, 2018, the Patron of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, defended truth at the price of his own blood.

Saint Fidelis knew that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Sacred Deposit of Faith had entrusted the entirety of His Sacred Deposit of Faith exclusively to the Catholic Church its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping. The Catholic Church is alone the sole teacher of sacred truth, and she alone is the authoritative guardian and interpreter of the binding precepts of the Natural Law.

Conversely, Catholics must hate all that is opposed to truth because God loathes all that is opposed to truth. Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen summarized this own mission as the extirpation of heresy, not one of embracing or, worse yet, rejoicing in it:

“I came to extirpate heresy, not to embrace it.”

Can anyone who is honest say with a straight face that the “popes” of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have sought to extirpate heresy?

Indeed, the six false claimants to the papal throne since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, have shown themselves to be agents of Antichrist, men who have taught that which has been anathematized by Holy Mother Church’s true general councils and condemned repeatedly by her true popes. These revolutionary instigators of novelties and innovations have even dared to do that which millions of Holy Mother Church’s martyrs died to avoid even the appearance of doing, namely, to enter into temples of false worship and to speak words of praise for adherents of false religions and their false beliefs. Is it possible for a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter to do such things.

Truth alone must guide us in this passing, mortal vale of tears. Nothing else. Catholics must have sober and clear understanding of the truths of the Holy Faith. Subjectivity or emotionalism of any kind have no place in the interpretation of the Sacred Deposit of Faith, including the Divine Constitution of Holy Mother Church and the nature of the papacy.

Those of us who have come to the conclusion that the See of Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958 and that a counter-church has arisen that appears to be—but is not—the Catholic Church have not done so out of “despair” to seek flight from the suffering and crosses in this time of apostasy and betrayal. The cross is ever-present in our lives, and anyone who thinks that it is not a cross to be estranged from family members, friends, acquaintances and even financial benefactors because one has come to recognize that men who do not possess the Catholic Faith cannot be true popes is simply minimizing the seriousness that is used by a believing Catholic to study Holy Mother Church’s doctrines, which teach us that heretics expel themselves from her maternal bosom without any formal declaration and thus cannot be true and legitimate Successors of Saint Peter:

8. We are mindful only of what is witnessed to by Holy Writ and what is otherwise well known. Christ proves His own divinity and the divine origin of His mission by miracles; He teaches the multitudes heavenly doctrine by word of mouth; and He absolutely commands that the assent of faith should be given to His teaching, promising eternal rewards to those who believe and eternal punishment to those who do not. “If I do not the works of my Father, believe Me not” John x., 37). “If I had not done among them the works than no other man had done, they would not have sin” (Ibid. xv., 24). “But if I do (the works) though you will not believe Me, believe the works” (Ibid. x., 38). Whatsoever He commands, He commands by the same authority. He requires the assent of the mind to all truths without exception. It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to all and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine:they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

With reference to its object, faith cannot be greater for some truths than for others. Nor can it be less with regard to the number of truths to be believed. For we must all believe the very same thing, both as to the object of faith as well as to the number of truths. All are equal in this because everyone must believe all the truths of faith--both those which God Himself has directly revealed, as well as those he has revealed through His Church. Thus, I must believe as much as you and you as much as I, and all other Christians similarly. He who does not believe all these mysteries is not Catholic and therefore will never enter Paradise. (Saint Francis de Sales, The Sermons of Saint Francis de Sales for Lent Given in 1622, republished by TAN Books and Publishers for the Visitation Monastery of Frederick, Maryland, in 1987, pp. 34-37.)

Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.

Besides, the Church demands from those who have devoted themselves to furthering her interests, something very different from the dwelling upon profitless questions; she demands that they should devote the whole of their energy to preserve the faith intact and unsullied by any breath of error, and follow most closely him whom Christ has appointed to be the guardian and interpreter of the truth. There are to be found today, and in no small numbers, men, of whom the Apostle says that: "having itching ears, they will not endure sound doctrine: but according to their own desires they will heap up to themselves teachers, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (II Tim. iv. 34). Infatuated and carried away by a lofty idea of the human intellect, by which God's good gift has certainly made incredible progress in the study of nature, confident in their own judgment, and contemptuous of the authority of the Church, they have reached such a degree of rashness as not to hesitate to measure by the standard of their own mind even the hidden things of God and all that God has revealed to men. Hence arose the monstrous errors of "Modernism," which Our Predecessor rightly declared to be "the synthesis of all heresies," and solemnly condemned. We hereby renew that condemnation in all its fulness, Venerable Brethren, and as the plague is not yet entirely stamped out, but lurks here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully on their guard against any contagion of the evil, to which we may apply the words Job used in other circumstances: "It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring" (Job xxxi. 12). Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savours of antiquity and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety. Therefore it is Our will that the law of our forefathers should still be held sacred: "Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down." In matters of faith that must be inviolably adhered to as the law; it may however also serve as a guide even in matters subject to change, but even in such cases the rule would hold: "Old things, but in a new way."  (Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, November 1, 1914.)

There is no such thing as “almost Catholic,” and there is certainly nothing called an “irreducible minima” of beliefs which one must hold to remain a member of the Catholic Church and thus to save his immortal soul. It is all or nothing. This is the teaching of the Catholic Church from which no one may dissent legitimately. No one who is intellectually honest can claim that the six conciliar claimants to the papacy have held the doctrine of the Catholic Church wholly and inviolably. It is these false claimants to the papacy who have not held to the truth of salvation. Indeed, these men have led Catholics and non-Catholics alike away from the salvation.

This is all relevant as a preface to commenting on a video that was a criticism of both sedevacantism and the “resist while recognize” movement that was sent to me by a Catholic who has suffered much in her own family for refusing to go to Masses that una cum Francisco.

The forty-eight minute video is a well-produced montage of images that are shown while the voice of the presenter, who is a presbyter in a Motu community, is heard. What is most distressing about the presentation, however, is the fact that each one of the presenter’s main points about sedevacantism have been refuted numerous times. There was nothing “new” about the superficial and even sophistic arguments used as a means to exhort—if not scare—Catholics not to “go there” and follow other sheep “off the cliff” and hence out, according to the presenter, of the Catholic Church by coming to realize that heretics are incompetent to hold any ecclesiastical office within the bosom of Holy Mother Church, incluing the papacy. However, as some people have found the presentation to be convincing, it is thus necessary to provide a review of some of the presenter’s main points.

Before beginning this review, though, it is important to preface my own commentary by stating that this is being written without any animus toward the presenter, who was in our acquaintance in the early part of the last decade and for whom we have gratitude his friendship in the past, or anyone else. Truth, though, exists independently of human acceptance of it, and the truth about the 2014 presentation is that most of the arguments made against sedevcantism apply to the conciliar revolutionaries and those who follow them off a cliff, shall we say, into the abyss.

I. Sedevacantism An Impossibility?

The presenter made a number of points in his presentation, including his contention that sedevacantism is an impossibility.

An impossibility?

Well, perhaps the presenter was unfamiliar with Mario Francesco “Cardinal” Pompedda’s statement, made when some had expressed doubts about “Saint John Paul II’s” capacity to govern as he was nearing death from Stage Three Parkinson’s Disease, about sedevacantism being part of the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church:

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; see also see also Gregorius's The Chair is Still Empty.) 

The presenter seems to have been unaware of “Cardinal” Pompedda said nine years before his own presentation in 2014. However, Pompedda was intellectually honest enough to admit that sedevacantism is indeed a part of the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church. Only a handful of Catholics, priests and laity alike, accepted this doctrine and recognized that it applied in our circumstances in the immediate aftermath of the "Second" Vatican Council. I was not one of them.

Moreover, sedevacantists very much believe in the doctrine of perpetual successors to Saint Peter, but this doctrine does not exclude the possibility of a long period of vacancy.

The late Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., explained this in very clear terms:

November 30, 2002

Dear Correspondent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 25, 2003

Dear Faithful Catholic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The presenter called sedevacantism to be a “novelty” and an “innovation.” He had assured his hearers that it was not necessary to consult theological commentaries the meaning of Pastor Aeternus concerning the possibility of a long interregnum of papal succession. The presenter was in error. Sedevacantism is not a “novelty” or an “innovation,” nor is it held as a matter of “despair” or as a means to flee from the foot of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Holy Cross as Holy Mother Church undergoes her own Passion.

Moreover, the presenter’s confident assurance that Pastor Aeternus could be read without consulting theological commentaries betrays, most unintentionally, the same approach that Protestants have with respect to Sacred Scripture. Protestants do not rely upon any sort of mediation to “understand” and to “interpret” Holy Writ, and they have an especial disdain for how Saint Thomas Aquinas made use of the Church Fathers in defense of Catholic Church.

Catholic scholarship does indeed rely upon theological commentaries as it is possible for a person to miss important explications on a subject that help to shed light on the mind of Holy Mother Church. To refer to sedevacantism as a “novelty” or an “innovation” is ignore the theological commentaries written on the subject and it is to ignore entirely Pope Paul IV’s Cum Ex Apostalatus, February 15, 1559 (appended below), which is cited as follows in Canon 188§4 of the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law:

If any cleric … publicly defects from the Catholic Faith… all of his offices become vacant ‘ipso facto’ and without any declaration, by tacit resignation accepted by the law itself. (As found at: Suarez on Heretical Pope.)

Sedevacantism is no “novelty” or “innovation.” It is part of the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is not a “solution” to the crisis facing the Church Militant today; it is merely the application of Catholic principles to this situation. God Himself will restore a true pope to the Throne of Saint Peter, most probably by a miraculous means that coincide with a number of private revelations, in His good time. His favor does not rest upon known heretics, apostates, blasphemers and profaners.

It is not impossible for the Throne of Saint Peter to be vacant for an extended period of time. It is impossible for a true pope to teach heresy and error. Those who are not convinced on this point should consult Saint Robert Bellarmine’s Defense of Popes Said to Have Erred in Faith.

II. Membership in the Catholic Church Necessary to Attain Salvation

The presenter also noted that it is necessary, although not sufficient, to be a member of the true Church to attain salvation, which depends also upon their submitting to the Successor of Saint Peter.

This is true, of course.

As noted just above, though, it is the conciliar revolutionaries who have expelled themselves from the bosom of Holy Mother Church by virtue of their holding to numerous heresies and daring even to proclaim them publicly, no less to commit acts of apostasy that are a mockery of the heroism of the martyrs and of the zeal of countless confessors who sought to bring heretics and infidels into the true Church.

Those who recognize there has been no true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, adhere entirely to the irreformable teaching that the salvation of men depends upon their submitting to the Vicar of Christ on earth. What the presenter does not address, however, is that the conciliar revolutionaries themselves do not believe this teaching. Indeed, they have reaffirmed Protestants, the Orthodox, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Buddhists and even atheists that they have their own paths to salvation.

For instance, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, rejected what he called disparingly as the "ecumenism of the return" when he spoke at an "ecumenical" gathering 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.)

It was just three years before the beginning of the “Second” Vatican Council at which Father Joseph Ratzinger, who had been under suspicion of heresy by the Holy Office during the pontificate of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, served as a peritus (expert), and that formed the revolutionary mind of Jorge Mario Bergoglio that Father Francis A. Connell wrote the following about the heresy of “unity in diversity”:

To characterize the relation between Catholics and Protestants as 'unity-in-diversity' is misleading, inasmuch as it implies that essentially Catholics are one with heretics, and that their diversities are only accidental. Actually, the very opposite is the true situation. For, however near a heretical sect may seem to be to the Catholic Church in its particular beliefs, a wide gulf separates them, insofar as the divinely established means whereby the message of God is to be communicated to souls--the infallible Magisterium of the Church--is rejected by every heretical sect. By telling Protestants that they are one with us in certain beliefs, in such wise as to give the impression that we regard this unity as the predominant feature of our relation with them, we are actually misleading them regarding the true attitude of the Catholic Church toward those who do not acknowledge Her teaching authority. (Father Francis Connell, Father Connell Answers Moral Questions, published in 1959 by Catholic University of America Press, p. 11; quoted in Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, CMRI, TUMULTUOUS TIMES, p. 348.)

This is a precise and exact description of what the conciliar “popes” have done. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a heretic. So is his predecessor. So was his predecessor's “canonized” predecessor. So was his “canonized” predecessor's immediate predecessor and the soon-to-be “canonized” predecessor who promulgated the decrees of the “Second” Vatican Council, which was convened by the “canonized” supporter of Sillonism and of anti-liturgical Jansenism.

Remember, this what Bergoglio said in a video presentation that was played at a gathering of young Catholics in Argentina on Auugst 7, 2013, the Feast of Saint Cajetan:

Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for coming here today. Thank you for all that you bear in your heart. Jesus loves you very much. Saint Cajetan loves you very much. He only asks one thing of you: that you come together! That you go out and seek and find one in greater need! But not alone - with Jesus, with Saint Cajetan! Am I going to go out to convince someone to become a Catholic? No, no, no! You are going to meet with him, he is your brother! That's enough! And you are going to help him, the rest Jesus does, the Holy Spirit does it. Remember well: with Saint Cajetan, we the needy go to meet with those who are in greater need. And, hopefully, Jesus will direct your way so that you will meet with one in greater need. (Francis the Insane Dreamer, Rebel and Miscreant's Message for the Feast of Saint Cajetan.)

It was less than a year after the remarks quoted just above that Bergoglio spoke the following at a Pentecostal "church" in Caserta, Italy, as he reaffirmed Protestants in their false religion:

When one walks in God’s presence, there is this fraternity. When, instead, we are still, when we look too much to one another, there is another way … which is bad, bad!  -- the way of gossip. And we begin to say, “but you, don’t you know?” “No, no, I’m not for you. I’m for this and that …” “I am for Paul,” “I am for Appollos,” “I am for Peter.” And so we begin, and so from the first moment division began in the Church. And it isn’t the Holy Spirit who creates division! He does something that is quite similar to it, but not division. It’s not the Lord Jesus who creates division! He who creates division is in fact the Envious One, the king of envy, the father of envy: the sower of darnel, Satan. He interferes in communities and creates divisions, always! From the first moment, from the first moment of Christianity, this temptation was in the Christian community. “I belong to this one,” I belong to that one.” “No! I am the Church, you are a sect.” And so the one who wins over us is him, the father of division – not the Lord Jesus who prayed for unity (John 17), he prayed! (Address to Pentecostal Community in Caserta.)

What does the Holy Spirit do? I said he does something else, which perhaps one might think is division, but it isn’t. The Holy Spirit creates “diversity” in the Church. The First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12. He creates diversity! And this diversity is truly very rich, very beautiful. But then, the Holy Spirit himself creates unity, and so the Church is one in diversity. And, to use the word of an Evangelical whom I love very much, a “reconciled diversity” by the Holy Spirit. He creates both things: He creates the diversity of charisms and then He creates the harmony of charisms. Therefore, the early theologians of the Church, the early Fathers – I am speaking of the 3rdor 4thcentury – said: “The Holy Spirit is harmony,” because He creates this harmonious unity in diversity.

We are in the age of globalization, and we wonder what globalization is and what the unity of the Church would be: perhaps a sphere, where all points are equidistant from the center, all are equal? No! This is uniformity. And the Holy Spirit does not create uniformity! What figure can we find? We think of the polyhedron: the polyhedron is a unity, but with all different parts; each one has its peculiarity, its charism. This is unity in diversity. It is on this path that we, Christians, do what we call with the theological name of ecumenism. We try to have this diversity become more harmonized by the Holy Spirit and become unity. We seek to walk in the presence of God to be irreproachable. We seek to find the nourishment of which we are in need to find our brother. This is our way, this is our Christian beauty! I refer to what my beloved brother said at the beginning.  (Address to Pentecostal Community in Caserta.)

For the conciliar "popes," including Bergoglio, to be correct, Popes Pius IX had to have been wrong for specifially and categorically exhorting Protestants to convert to the Faith:

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)

Anyone who believes that Jorge Mario Bergolio, who has told us on numerous occasions that he does not want to convert anyone to what he thinks is the Catholic Church, shares Pope Pius IX's fear for his soul if he did not invite non-Catholics into Church is either mired in delusion or is steeped in ranked intellectual dishonesty as they shut their eyes and close their mouths to the truth that Bergoglio believes not a word of Pope Pius IX's exhortation contained in Iam Vos Omnes. Unlike Pope Pius IX, the Argentine Apostate does not does not believe that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. None of the conciliar “popes” have believed that it is necessary to submit to the Roman Pontiff in order to be saved. None of these men have believed that it is necessary to be a member of the Catholic Church to attain salvation. They are the men leading sheep off the cliff, not sedevacantists. They are the ones who have reaffirmed the falsehood that Protestants and the Orthodox have a “mission” from God to sanctify and to save souls, not sedevacantists.

There is a particular irony in this as the very sophisticated video display overlaying the presenter’s voice featured a montage of Protestant “ministers” to illustrate the sort of false shepherds who have no mission from God to serve souls. Well, go tell that to the conciliar “popes,” false shepherds in their own right, of course, including “Saint John Paul II” himself, who told none other than the late Fuller Brush Man, William Franklin Graham, whose image, just by the way, was displayed in the video montage of false shepherds in the 2014 presentation, that the two of them were “brothers,” have indeed told Protestants and the Orthodox—and even Jews and Mohammedans—that they have such a mission.

Here are a few more reminders:

Opening his Southern crusades to blacks and cooperating with Roman Catholics, both measures vigorously criticized by many of his supporters, required courage of the kind conventionally lauded as liberal or progressive. It is true that challenging racial segregation and anti-Catholic prejudice were both deemed progressive stances, but I am rather sure that carried little weight with Billy Graham. His singular passion was to preach the saving gospel of Jesus Christ to absolutely everyone.

Many Catholic leaders warmly welcomed his ministry; others were more ambivalent. In New York, the late John Cardinal O'Connor embraced him and urged archdiocese priests to encourage people to come out to hear him. Innumerable Catholics were doubtlessly renewed and strengthened in faith as a consequence of Graham's ministry.

He met with popes from John XXIII to John Paul II, and his friendship with the latter seemed especially warm and deep. After an extraordinary personal meeting of two hours in 1989, Graham reported, "There was a pause in the conversation; suddenly the pope's arm shot out and he grabbed the lapels of my coat, he pulled me forward within inches of his own face. He fixed his eyes on me and said, 'Listen Graham, we are brothers.'"

Already in 1966, only a year after the Second Vatican Council, Graham said, "I find myself closer to Catholics than the radical Protestants. I think the Roman Catholic Church today is going through a second Reformation." On The Phil Donahue Show in 1979, he said, "I think the American people are looking for a leader, a moral and spiritual leader that believes something. And the pope does. … Thank God, I've got somebody to quote now with some real authority." On John Paul's visit to America in 1980: "[He] has emerged as the greatest religious leader of the modern world, and one of the greatest moral and spiritual leaders of this century. ... The pope came [to America] as a statesman and a pastor, but I believe he also sees himself coming as an evangelist. … The pope sought to speak to the spiritual hunger of our age in the same way Christians throughout the centuries have spoken to the spiritual yearnings of every age—by pointing people to Christ." And later, on the pope's message in Vancouver, where Graham preached a month later: "I'll tell you, that was just about as straight an evangelical address as I've ever heard. … He gives moral guidance in a world that seems to have lost its way."

In his statements about John Paul II, as well as about Mother Teresa and the Catholic church more generally, many evangelicals thought Graham had gone overboard or landed in gross heresy. But I am confident that he was driven by a passion for sharing the saving gospel of Christ. In the great encyclical of 2000, Redemptoris Missio ("Mission of the Redeemer"), John Paul envisioned the third millennium as "a springtime of world evangelization." Graham surrendered his entire life to playing a not insignificant part in precipitating that springtime. (The Preacher and the "Popes".)

Ah, “Brother” Billy Graham. Such is the stuff of a conciliar “saint,” a subject to be explored below, if ever so briefly.

Wait.

It gets worse.

The man who will doubtless be called “Saint Benedict XVI” one day placed his murdered friend, Roger Schutz, the Protestant founder of the Taize Ecumenical Community, in Heaven almost immediately after he received word of Schutz’s death at the hands of one of his own followers on August 16, 2005. This is the same Roger Schutz who received what purports to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service at Karol Josef Wojtyla’s “Mass of Christian Burial” on April 8, 2005:

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 17, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow at the murder of Brother Roger Schutz, saying the founder of the ecumenical Taizé Community is “in the hands of eternal goodness.”

Brother Roger, 90, was stabbed to death by a woman Tuesday at an evening prayer service attended by 2,500 people in the Burgundy region in France, authorities said. A 36-year-old Romanian woman was detained by witnesses and turned over to police, authorities said.

The Pope showed emotion as he expressed his grief, at the end of today’s general audience.

“This news has affected me even more because precisely yesterday I received a very moving, affectionate letter from Frère Roger,” the Pope said, addressing the pilgrims gathered in the patio of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo.

“In it he wrote that from the depth of his heart he wanted to tell me that ‘we are in communion with you and with those who have gathered in Cologne,’” the Holy Father said.

Hopes for Cologne

Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had known Brother Roger for a long time.

During Pope John Paul II’s funeral, Cardinal Ratzinger, the then dean of the College of Cardinals, surprised observers when he went up to Brother Roger, who was in a wheelchair, to give him Communion. Brother Roger was not Catholic.

In his letter, the founder of the ecumenical community explained to the new Pope that “because of his state of health, unfortunately he would not be able to come personally to Cologne, but that he would be present spiritually with his brothers.”

The letter, written in French, expressed Brother Roger’s desire “to come as soon as possible to Rome to meet with me and to tell me that ‘our Community of Taizé wants to go forward in communion with the Holy Father,’” according to Benedict XVI.

The letter ended with these words in Brother Roger’s own handwriting: “Holy Father, I assure you of my sentiments of profound communion. Frère Roger of Taizé.”

“At this moment of sadness,” the Pope said, “we can only commend to the Lord’s goodness the soul of this faithful servant of his.”

“Frère Schutz is in the hands of eternal goodness, of eternal love; he has attained eternal joy,” the Holy Father added. “He invites and exhorts us to be faithful laborers in the Lord’s vineyard, also in sad situations, certain that the Lord accompanies us and gives us his joy.” (Benedict Mourns Murder of Taizé’s Brother Roger.)

“He has attained eternal joy.”

Roger Schutz never converted to the Catholic Faith. He had no “mission” from God to sanctify and to save souls. He remained a heretic to the day of his death. This mattered not to Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

Similarly, the aforementioned Jorge Mario Bergoglio called the late “Bishop” Tony Palmer of the Anglican Charismatic Movement to be his “brother bishop” in a video that he, the Argentine Apostate, had prepared to be played at the Kenneth Copeland Ministries Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, four years ago:

Addressing Palmer as “my brother, a bishop-brother” and saying they had “been friends for years,” the pope offered what he said were greetings “both joyful and full of longing” to participants in a forthcoming meeting of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a Pentecostal group that sponsors large prayer gatherings around the world. (Bergoglio's "Brother" "Bishop" Dies in Motorcyle Accident)

Bergoglio even insisted that Palmer, who was killed in a motorcycle accident on July 20, 2014, be buried as a “bishop” with an allegedly “Catholic” “Mass of Christian Burial”:

I attended the requiem of the late Bishop Tony Palmer at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in the City of Bath on the 6^th August. Canon David Ryan the parish priest at St. John’s ( a truly beautiful and Spirit filled believer) kindly gave me a place to stay in the presbytery so that I didn’t have to rush back home after the funeral or seek more expensive accommodation in the city.

I arrived after a rather long and tedious journey by train from Bexhill-on Sea to Bath, arriving  a couple of hours before the funeral. (A special word of sincere thanks goes to my dear friends in the USA, Vivian Ruth Sawyer and Thomas Nolan who helped finance my attendance).

St. John the Evangelist church is situated in the city centre five minutes from the railway station, so I had time to rest and eat some pizza, which the house keeper had kindly prepared, before other guests started arriving. The Requiem was purposefully arranged to be at 4p.m. to enable the funeral cortège to get through the heavily congested city centre roads, many of which had road works in progress.

Bishops and priests from the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches arrived an hour or so before the start of the requiem mass, along with guests from other churches locally and from around the world. Bruno Ierullo and Steve Long the senior Pastor of Catch the Fire Church in Toronto came and represented John and Carol Arnott who had recently been with Bishop Tony and Pope Francis at a meeting in the Vatican of a number of Charismatic Evangelicals from North America.

I felt a little like a lion in a den of Daniels, but my fear diminished as we greeted one another and shared our stories as to why we were there and how Bishop Tony had been influential in all our lives. In one way or another his life and vision had touched each of us individually. I found myself completely at home with these brothers and sisters in Christ who were encourager’s and enablers in so many ways.

(Tony’s family arrived about a twenty minutes before the start of the mass;  Emiliana his wife and their two children, Daniele and Gabriella, along with Tony’s sister and other relatives and close friends).

We all shared and discussed different matters and I was able to share the vision of the Companions of Jesus and found all responded favourably. In fact I found again here just as I had done with Tony, that we shared a common vision for unity in the Body of Christ. Bishop David Carr OSL and his brother Bishop Anthony Carr OSL spoke to me about the Order of St. Leonard and were interested in how the Companions of Jesus is a Non-Denominational Order with a very similar vision. (A quote from the OSL website reads, “The primary goal of the OSL was, and is, to bring together all Christians, regardless of differing denominations and streams, without leaving their distinctive groupings, in to a unified fellowship for prayer, mission and to help the disadvantaged.”).

I have forgotten some names of the many who I spoke with,  Fr. Steve Hughes, Revd. Esther Squire, Fr.Giles and Bishop James of the CEEC along with a number of local Anglican priests who knew Tony.

Fr. David our wonderful host led us out to greet Tony’s mortal remains as they arrived at the entrance to the Church. Fr. David told us he would like us as ministers to lead the procession up to the sanctuary and for us to remain at the front either side of the altar in the choir stalls. Fr David confessed that he would have loved us to be able to con-celebrate with him, but for now this was impossible. He found he had to remember his vow of obedience to the diocesan bishop and knew we would understand.

Fr. David told us that because Tony was not a Roman Catholic he had to ask his bishops permission to celebrate the requiem and though Tony’ s wife and children are Roman Catholics, permission still had to be given for the requiem. The bishop agreed but said that Tony could not be buried as a bishop as he was not a Roman Catholic bishop. However, Pope Francis said he should and could be buried as a bishop…and so that put an end to that little bit of ecclesiastical nonsense!

The Church was packed and though the Ark Community had wanted to have the funeral to go out live on streamed TV over the internet, there were too many technical problems. The church of St. John the Evangelist is a magnificent building in the centre of Bath, but like so many old monolithic structures it is suffering from age and is in need of a number of repairs. The church this week was full of scaffolding which trellis like covered one side of the church from ground to ceiling, from entrance right up to the sanctuary where the Tony’s Coffin was placed at the foot of the sanctuary in front of the altar.

As I sat with my fellow brother and sister ministers looking down from the choir stalls to the side of the altar, I was struck by the prophetic vision that was before us. I saw Tony’s coffin next to the trellis of iron girders and heard that call to St Francis of Assisi and more recently to Tony Palmer, a call to go and repair the brokenness of The Church. There in this building, in such need of repair, was a picture…of the Body of Christ, The Church of God. There in the coffin lay the remains of a man who like our seraphic father Francis had heeded the call to ‘go and repair my house which as you can see is in ruins’.

Other too heard that call this day and so it is for each of us to continue on this road which The Lord calls us to and which Tony helped re-lay, a road that draws brothers who have been too long divided, together again in Christ Jesus.

The requiem was beautiful, the liturgy fitting for such an occasion, the music was uplifting led by the Vineyard Church Fellowship and the music ministry of St’ Johns church. Daniele and Gabriella both spoke lovingly and passionately of their father. Emiliana read out a letter from Pope Francis that was both touching and profound.

Tony’s mortal remains were taken to the Eyre Chapel Crypt, at Perrymeade Catholic Cemetery, in Bath.

In part of the message Pope Francis sent to the conference of Charismatic Evangelical Christians in the USA through Bishop Tony, Pope Francis said, “ I am speaking to you as a brother. I speak to you in a simple way. With joy and yearning. Let us allow our yearning to grow, because this will propel us to find each other, to embrace one another. And together to worship Jesus Christ as the only Lord of History.”

I pray that we will work and walk together in the power of The Holy Spirit and that the blessing promised in Psalm 133 will be ours. (Bergoglio Insisted that Tony Palmer Be Buried as a Bishop.)

Well, it takes one to know one.

Yes, it takes one false "bishop" to recognize another false "bishop" and to accord him full honors on SS One World Ecumenical Church.

The presenter of the anti-sedevacantist video does not seem to understand that the conciliar revolutionaries are the ones who have expelled themselves from the bosom of Holy Mother Church by holding to—and by daring to publicly proclaim—beliefs contrary to the Catholic Faith.

Is it possible that God the Holy Ghost, Who is immutable, can permit the Catholic Church to teach one thing for nineteen centuries and then to permit her popes to teach another as being true?

Believing Catholics who reject the illegitimate claimants to the Throne of Saint Peter after the death of Pope Pius XII refuse to submit to apostate robber barons who have said and done things that are impossible for true popes to say and to do.

Similarly, the conciliar “popes” have been as one since “Saint John Paul II” in contradicting the immutable truth that the Old Covenant has been superseded by the New and Eternal Covenant instituted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and ratified by the shedding of every drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. These “popes” have told us so in so many words:

247. We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). The Church, which shares with Jews an important part of the sacred Scriptures, looks upon the people of the covenant and their faith as one of the sacred roots of her own Christian identity (cf. Rom 11:16-18). As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion; nor do we include the Jews among those called to turn from idols and to serve the true God (cf. 1 Thes 1:9). With them, we believe in the one God who acts in history, and with them we accept his revealed word.

248. Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples. The friendship which has grown between us makes us bitterly and sincerely regret the terrible persecutions which they have endured, and continue to endure, especially those that have involved Christians.

249. God continues to work among the people of the Old Covenant and to bring forth treasures of wisdom which flow from their encounter with his word. For this reason, the Church also is enriched when she receives the values of Judaism. While it is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah, there exists as well a rich complementarity which allows us to read the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures together and to help one another to mine the riches of God’s word. We can also share many ethical convictions and a common concern for justice and the development of peoples. (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Evangelii Gaudium, November 26, 2013.)

"Pope Francis" chose to have this "apostolic exhortation" published in the December, 2013, edition of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

Here are the three passages as found in the Italian language (not Latin, by the way!) in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis as it is published in its conciliar captivity:

247. Uno sguardo molto speciale si rivolge al popolo ebreo, la cui Alleanza con Dio non è mai stata revocata, perché “i doni e la chiamata di Dio sono irrevocabili” (Rm 11, 29). La Chiesa, che condivide con l’Ebraismo una parte importante delle Sacre Scritture, considera il popolo dell’Alleanza e la sua fede come una radice sacra della propria identità cristiana (cfr Rm 11, 16-18). Come cristiani non possiamo considerare l’Ebraismo come una religione estranea, né includiamo gliebrei tra quanti sono chiamati ad abbandonare gli idoli per convertirsi al vero Dio (cfr 1 Ts 1, 9). Crediamo insieme con loro nell’unico Dio che agisce nella storia, e accogliamo con loro la comune Parola rivelata.

248. Il dialogo e l’amicizia con i figli d’Israele sono parte della vita dei discepoli di Gesù. L’affetto che si è sviluppato ci porta sinceramene ed amaramente a dispiacerci per le terribili persecuzioni di cui furono e sono oggetto, particolarmente per quelle che coinvolgono o hanno coinvolto cristiani.

249. Dio continua ad operare nel popolo dell’Antica Alleanza e fa nascere tesori di saggezza che scaturiscono dal suo incontro con la Parola divina. Per questo anche la Chiesa si arricchisce quando raccoglie i valori dell’Ebraismo. Sebbene alcune convinzioni cristiane siano inaccettabili per l’Ebraismo, e la Chiesa non possa rinunciare ad annunciare Gesù come Signore e Messia, esiste una ricca complementarietà che ci permette di leggere insieme i testi della Bibbia ebraica e aiutarci vicendevolmente a scerare le ricchezze della Parola, come pure di condividere molte convinzioni etiche e la comune preoccupazione per la giustizia e lo sviluppo dei popoli. (Data presso San Pietro, alla chiusura dell’Anno della fede, il 24 novembre, Solennità i i. S. Gesù Cristo Re dell’Universo, dell’anno 2013, primo del mio Pontificato. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, December, 2013.)

If one professes belief that a particular claimant to the Throne of Saint Peter is legitimate and is indeed the Vicar of Christ on earth, a matter about which no Catholic is free to err or to profess indifference, then one must accept as binding upon his conscience and beyond all criticism even Evangelii Gaudium as part of the Universal Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church without complaint, reservation or quAlification of any kind.

Well, is the Mosaic Covenant still valid?

Has it never been revoked?

One must agree with the "pope's" statement as he has caused it to be it to be published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis:

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?

Why the silence on this point of doctrine?

Obviously, Jorge Mario Bergoglio's "teaching" on the Jews is heretical, and it is in this and in so many other ways that he shows himself to be a perfect disciple of the falsehoods promulgated by the authority of his predecessors since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. Jorge Mario Bergolio lacks the Catholic Faith, He has openly denied Catholic doctrine on this subject with great boldness. Although he style is more vulgar, visceral profane that those who have perceded him, he is, of course, merely following those before him who have denied, whether implicitly or explicitly, the Catholic truth about the Old Covenant that was summarized so clearly by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943:

28.That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Savior on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living. [28] "And it is now," says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, "that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that is .... molded, it is now that it is created . . . Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood." [29] One who reverently examines this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based.

29.And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area -- He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel [30] -the Law and the Gospel were together in force; [31] but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, [32] fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, [33] establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. [34] "To such an extent, then," says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, "was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom." [35]

30. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, [36] in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers; [37] and although He had been constituted the Head of the whole human family in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, it is by the power of the Cross that our Savior exercises fully the office itself of Head in His Church. "For it was through His triumph on the Cross," according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, "that He won power and dominion over the gentiles"; [38] by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God's anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

Pope Pius XII's Mystici Corporis was inserted into the Acta Apostolicae Sedis in 1943. Although it was nothing new whatsoever, Pope Pius XII reaffirmed an irreformable teaching that is part of the Sacred Deposit of Faith. The fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose to insert a contrary teaching into the Acta Apostlicae Sedis shows that he is, in perfect communion of mind and heart with his predecessors, a heretic who is outside of the bosom of the Catholic Church, an imposter on the Throne of Saint Peter.

Then again, each of the conciliar “popes” have offended the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity by their endless succession of words and deeds in violation of the First and the Second Commandments as they have esteemed the symbols of false religions and by contending that false religions, which are hideous in the site of the true God of Divine Revelation, are instruments of “peace” and that many of them have “elements of sanctification.”

Consider the following images:

October 27, 1986

October 27, 1986

 

 

October 27, 2011, above. 

Bergoglio his pectoral cross when he wore "uttariya shawl which was a gift from Sri Lankan Hindu priest Kurukkal SivaSri T Mahadevasome on Tuesday, January 13, 2015, the Octave Day of the Epiphany of Our Lord, during his address to leaders of other false religions in Colombo, Sri Lanka (see Deja Vu In Sri Lanka):

As the post on Call Me Jorge on which the photographs above may be found, noted, Bergoglio also paid an impromptu visit to a Buddhist  temple on the way back from a Marian shrine in Sri Lanka. So much idolatry, so little time.  

Below is a photograh of Jorge's thirtieth anniversary of "Saint John Paul II's" World Day of Peace, September 30, 2016:

The presenter of that 2014 anti-sedevacantist video would have us believe, for example, apostate acts such as displayed in the images above do not “matter,” that the “pope is the pope.” No, apostates can never be true and legitimate Successors of Saint Peter as they are not members of the Catholic Church and are instrumental in reaffirming non-Catholics, including pagans, that they have a path of “salvation” that does not require membership in the Catholic Church.

It is indeed quite necessary to belong to the Catholic Church to attain salvation. It is the conciliar revolutionaries, not sedevacantists, who believe that this is so.

The Conciliar “Canonization” Process

The strongest part of the presenter’s video dealt was a rebuke to the “resist while recognize” movement’s refusal to accept the “canonization” of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II by Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Low Sunday, April 27, 2014. The presenter was entirely correct in stating that a papal declaration of that a soul is in Heaven and is to be raised to the altars of the Catholic Church is saint is binding upon all Catholics. This is point that I made in a number of articles on this site prior to the aforementioned “canonizations” four years ago, and it is point made in a number of posts on the Novus Ordo Watch Wire site.

It was just three months ago when the officials of the Occupy Vatican Movement on the West Bank of the Tiber River announced the pending “canonization” of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI that I reprised Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger’s doctrinal note about Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II’s Ad Tuendam Fidei, June 29, 1998, about the infallible nature of a declaration of canonization and reprised a treatise written by the eminent theologian, Monsignor Gerardus van Noort, that was found at Novus Ordo Watch Wire in 2013 (see "Canonizing" The Montini Paradigm Shift (Revolution)).

One who accepts the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as “Pope Francis” must accept the legitimacy of his acts, including his “canonizations.” The presenter is very correct on this important of Catholic doctrine.

Unfortunately for the presenter, however, his contention that images, such as those shown above, showing “Pope John Paul II’s” esteem for false religions “do not matter,” that “Saint John Paul II is in Heaven,” is tragically mistaken. I can assure the presenter that the images above matter very much to the true God of Divine Revelation, which is why it is impossible for a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter to even consider beatifying or canonizing anyone, no less a putative pope, who had done so during his “papal” reign.

The First Commandment matters of God, and it is a correlative proof of the apostate nature of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that its “popes” have thought nothing of doing things that millions upon millions of Catholics shed their blood to avoid doing, namely, offending God by showing marks of respect for false religions and their places of false worship. This is not a matter of whether the presenter does not “like” what “Saint John Paul II” did and said, it is a matter of what is true and pleasing in the sight of the true Go of Divine Revelation, the Most Holy Trinity.

The Catholic Church has canonized saints who had disdain for false religions and who even smashed their symbols and destroyed their temples.

Consider how two true Successors of Saint Peter, Pope Saint Gregory the Great and Pope Pius XII, praised the work of Saint Benedict of Nursia as he destroyed the temple of Apollo on Monte Cassino:

The castle called Cassino is situated upon the side of a high mountain which riseth in the air about three miles so that it seemed to touch the very heavens. On Monte Cassino stood an old temple where Apollo was worshiped by the foolish country people, according to the custom of the ancient heathen. Round about it, likewise grew groves, in which even until that time, the mad multitude of infidels offered their idolatrous sacrifices. The man of God, coming to that place, broke down the idol, overthrew the altar, burnt the groves and of the temple made a chapel of St. Martin; and where the profane altar had stood, he built a chapel of St. John and, by continual preaching converted many of the people thereabout.

But the old enemy, not bearing this silently, did present himself in the sight of the Father and with great cries complained of the violence he suffered, in so much that the brethren heard him, though they could see nothing. For, as the venerable Father told his disciples, the wicked fiend represented himself to his sight all on fire and, with flaming mouth and flashing eyes, seemed to rage against him. And they all heard what he said, for first he called him by name, and when the make of God would make no answer, he fell to reviling him. And whereas before he cried, "Benedict, Benedict," and saw he could get no answer, then he cried, "Maledict, not Benedict, what hast thou to do with me, and why dost thou persecute me?" (Pope Saint Gregory the Great, The Life of Saint Benedict, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1995, pp. 24-25.)

Then it was that this holy man saw that the time, ordained by God's providence, had come for him to found a family of religious men and to mold them to the perfection of the Gospels. He began under most favorable auspices. "For in those parts he had gathered together a great many in the service of God, so that by the assistance of Our Lord Jesus Christ he built there 12 monasteries, in each of which he put 12 monks with their Superiors, and retained a few with himself whom he thought to instruct further".

But while things started very favorably, as We said, and yielded rich and salutary results, promising still greater in the future, Our saint with the greatest grief of soul, saw a storm breaking over the growing harvest, which an envious spirit had provoked and desires of earthly gain had stirred up. Since Benedict was prompted by divine and not human counsel, and feared lest the envy which had been aroused mainly against himself should wrongfully recoil on his followers, "he let envy take its course, and after he had disposed of the oratories and other buildings -- leaving in them a competent number of brethren with superiors -- he took with him a few monks and went to another place". Trusting in God and relying on His ever present help, he went south and arrived at a fort "called Cassino situated on the side of a high mountain . . .; on this stood an old temple where Apollo was worshipped by the foolish country people, according to the custom of the ancient heathens. Around it likewise grew groves, in which even till that time the mad multitude of infidels used to offer their idolatrous sacrifices. The man of God coming to that place broke the idol, overthrew the altar, burned the groves, and of the temple of Apollo made a chapel of St. Martin. Where the profane altar had stood he built a chapel of St. John; and by continual preaching he converted many of the people thereabout".

Cassino, as all know, was the chief dwelling place and the main theater of the Holy Patriarch's virtue and sanctity. From the summit of this mountain, while practically on all sides ignorance and the darkness of vice kept trying to overshadow and envelop everything, a new light shone, kindled by the teaching and civilization of old and further enriched by the precepts of Christianity; it illumined the wandering peoples and nations, recalled them to truth and directed them along the right path. Thus indeed it may be rightly asserted that the holy monastery built there was a haven and shelter of highest learning and of all the virtues, and in those very troubled times was, "as it were, a pillar of the Church and a bulwark of the faith". (Pope Pius XII, Fulgens Radiatur, March 21, 1947.)

Yes, Saint Benedict sought to convert pagans to the true Faith. We have seen just above that Jorge Mario Bergoglio forbids Catholics to make converts and that he has told Protestant “ministers” that he has no intention of converting them. Such is the stuff of Antichrist, not of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

There are also the examples of Saints Boniface, who mocked the false gods worshipped by Germanic tribes, and Saint Francis Xavier, who praised children in the Indian city of Goa for their zeal in smashing pagan idols (see Saint Francis Xavier: A Catholic Fundamentalist Who Gave No Quarter to False Religions):

When by the grace and favor of God this very important task was done, Boniface did not allow himself his well-earned rest. In spite of the fact that he was already burdened by so many cares, and was feeling now his advanced age and realizing that his health was almost broken by so many labors, he prepared himself eagerly for a new and no less difficult enterprise. He turned his attention again to Friesland, that Friesland which had been the first goal of his apostolic travels, where he had later on labored so much. Especially in the northern regions this land was still enveloped in the darkness of pagan error. Zeal that was still youthful led him there to bring forth new sons to Jesus Christ and to bring Christian civilization to new peoples. For he earnestly desired “that in leaving this world he might receive his reward there where he had first begun his preaching and entered upon his meritorious career.” Feeling that his mortal life was drawing to a close, he confided his presentiment to his dear disciple, Bishop Lullus, and asserted that he did not want to await death in idleness. “I yearn to finish the road before me; I cannot call myself back from the path I have chosen. Now the day and hour of my death is at hand. For now I leave the prison of the body and go to my eternal reward. My dear son, . . . insist in turning the people from the paths of error, finish the construction of the basilica already begun at Fulda and there bring my body which has aged with the passage of many years.

When he and his little band had taken departure from the others, “he traveled through all Friesland, ceaselessly preaching the word of God, banishing pagan rites and extirpating immoral heathen customs. With tremendous energy he built churches and overthrew the idols of the temples. He baptized thousands of men, women and children.” After he had arrived in the northern regions of Friesland and was about to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation to a large number of newly baptized converts, a furious mob of pagans suddenly attacked and threatened to kill them with deadly spears and swords. Then the holy prelate serenely advanced and “forbade his followers to resist, saying, ‘Cease fighting, my children, for we are truly taught by Scripture not to return evil for evil, but rather good. The day we have long desired is now at hand; the hour of our death has come of its own accord. Take strength in the Lord, . . . be courageous and do not be afraid of those who kill the body, for they cannot slay an immortal soul. Rejoice in the Lord, fix the anchor of hope in God, Who will immediately give you an eternal reward and a place in the heavenly court with the angelic choirs’.” All were encouraged by these words to embrace martyrdom. They prayed and turned their eyes and hearts to heaven where they hoped to receive soon an eternal reward, and then fell beneath the onslaught of their enemies, who stained with blood the bodies of those who fell in the happy combat of the saints.” At the moment of this martyrdom, Boniface, who was to be beheaded by the sword, “placed the sacred book of the Gospels upon his head as the sword threatened, that he might receive the deadly stroke under it and claim its protection in death, whose reading he loved in life. (Pope Pius XII, Ecclesiae Fastos, June 5, 1954.)

An apostate son of Germany, one who is the very antithesis of the spirit of Saint Boniface, wrote the following about those who destroyed pagan temples:

In the relationship with paganism quite different and varied developments took place. The mission as a whole was not consistent. There were in fact Christian hotheads and fanatics who destroyed temples, who were unable to see paganism as anything other than idolatry that had to be radically eliminated. People saw points in common with philosophy, but not in pagan religion, which was seen as corrupt. (Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World, p. 373.)

Was Saint Boniface guilty of being one of these “Christian hotheads and fanatics who destroyed temples,” men “who were unable to see paganism as anything other than idolatry that had to be radically eliminated”? Ratzinger/Benedict not only blasphemed God as he denied the nature of dogmatic truth and esteemed the symbols and the “values” of false religions. He blasphemed the work and the memory of the very saint who evangelized his own German ancestors, the man who is the very patron saint of Germany, his homeland.

Catholicism or conciliarism. It’s one or the other. There is no middle ground. The Catholic Church cannot produce men in her official capacities who speak these things so promiscuously and without any word of correction for the sake of the honor and glory and majesty of God and for the good of the souls for whom Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross

Can this change?

Of course not.

It is impossible for the Catholic Church to declare anyone to be a canonized saint who gave any credence to false religions during his life even if he repented before death. Such repentance might be good enough to save a soul from eternal damnation, but the standard of canonization is a bit higher than that.

God will not be mocked. This has nothing to do with the Catholic Faith, something that our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII, noted in Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953:

Her deportment has not changed in the course of history, nor can it change whenever or wherever, under the most diversified forms, she is confronted with the choice: either incense for idols or blood for Christ. The place where you are now present, Eternal Rome, with the remains of a greatness that was and with the glorious memories of its martyrs, is the most eloquent witness to the answer of the Church. Incense was not burned before the idols, and Christian blood flowed and consecrated the ground. But the temples of the gods lie in the cold devastation of ruins howsoever majestic; while at the tombs of the martyrs the faithful of all nations and all tongues fervently repeat the ancient Creed of the Apostles. (Pope Pius XII, Ci Riesce, December 6, 1953.)

God the Holy Ghost has instructed us very clearly about the hideous nature of false worship:

For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens. (Psalm 95: 5)

“Saint John Paul II is in Heaven?”

No, no true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter would canonize anyone who did and said the things that were said and done by Karol Josef Wojtyla—nor would any true Sovereign Pontiff canonize anyone who knowingly started a theological revolution against the Catholic Faith, Angelo Roncalli/John Paul II.

Suffice it say for the moment that the conciliar "popes" have taught that false religions can be instruments of peace and justice that contain within them "elements of truth and sanctification.

It is impossible for false religions to be instruments of peace or justice.

False religions can never advance the sanctification or salvation of its adherents.

False religions can never advance any notion of true justice or peace.

Two of these false religions, Mohammedanism and Talmudism, which is not the dead religion of Biblical Judaism, specifically deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the most blasphemous terms in their "holy books" from the devil, which are, respectively, the Talmud and the Koran.

The Orthodox churches defect from the Catholic Faith in numerous ways, starting with a belief in  the Filioque, Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility, among numerous other doctrines.

Each of the Protestant sects is founded on a rejection of the simple truth that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded but one and only one Church, the Catholic Church, upon the Rock of Saint Peter, the Pope, defecting from the true Faith in numerous other ways. Many of the "mainline" Protestant sects have lost belief in the very words of Sacred Scripture upon which their false sects were founded to "preserve," becoming little more than real-life versions of the late Clerow Wilson's "Church of What's Happening Now." Yes, obviously, the same can be said of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in many areas and especially at the de facto level of pastoral praxis.

The leaders of "other religions," including those who worship the "Great Thumb" and those who worship their ancestors and Asiatic cults of the devil (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Shintoism--which is a made-up religion in Japan to exalt that country's nationalistic myths), are simply unreconstructed pagans.

None of these people knows anything about "peace" or "justice." Each is an enemy of Christ the King. Each refuses to accept the fact that the path to world peace runs through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and her Fatima Message, and by "each" here, of course, I mean to include the leaders of the false religion who convened these abominable travesties (Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Jorge Mario Bergoglio).

Yes, its is the common theological opinion that canonization is an infallible act of a Roman Pontiff but no true pope would ever canonize anyone who gave unrepentant offense by open and flagrant violations of the First and Second Commandments.

The conciliar revolutionaries have furthermore engaged blasphemed Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother, invoked the "deities" of false gods, esteemed the symbols of false religions with their own hands, propagated and staged a liturgical travesty—the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service—that makes a mockery of the Third Commandment, violated the Fourth Commandment by teaching that civil states do not have any obligation to recognize the true Church or to pursue the common temporal good in light of First and Last Things, denied that the civil state has a right founded in the Natural Law to exercise the death penalty for heinous crimes or has the right to engage in just wars, undermined the Sixth and Ninth Commandments by inverting the ends proper to marriage, providing explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to purity and propagated a concept of "natural family planning" that breeds selfishness and narcissism (to say nothing of promoting sodomy in a variety of ways, including in so-called "sex education" programs), divinized the environment in violation of the Seventh Commandment, misrepresented Our Lord's teaching and that of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, thereby bearing false witness in violation of the Eighth Commandment, and coveted the goods of the Catholic Church in violation of the Tenth Commandment. 

Revolutionaries must seek to “canonize” their own, and this is precisely what the conciliar “pope” have done and continue to do.

“The Dual Church Trap”

Citing a work written in the 1940s by Bishop Wilhelm Stockhums, who was an auxiliary bishop of Cologne Germany, from 1932 to the time of his death in 1956, the presentef cautioned against wanting a church that “once existed” or one in the future than could never exist, stressing that one must accept the church “that exists,” the “church as it is.”

Although I do not know much about Bishop Stockhums, I do know a great deal about the ordinary under whom served between 1942 and 1956, Josef Cardinal Frings, who very much wanted a church different than the one that existed at the time Bishop Stockhums wrote his own commentary. Cardinal Frings, as will be shown, wanted the “church” of the sort that is dear and near to the heart of a chap named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Cardinal Frings’ vision of this church does indeed exist at present was designed in large part by the young priest he brought with him to serve as his peritus at the “Second” Vatican Council, Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger.

Apostate Emeritus Ratzinger/Benedict XVI noted in interview with his favorite journalist, Peter Seewald, Final Conversations, that the vision of Cardinal Frings for an “open church” was met enthusiastically by “Pope John XXIII,” who saw in Frings a means to direct the “Second” Vatican Council in a manner that would change everything about the Catholic Church:

In the text, Benedict XVI admits to have been a “Progressive” at the time of the Second Vatican Council. As the journalist Peter Seewald shows with the help of his somewhat leading questions, Ratzinger also had a leading role in the preparatory work of the Council. He had gotten to know Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Germany, who himself was member of the Preparatory Commission of the Council. Frings at some point invited Ratzinger to write down his own comments and criticisms on each of the schemata(drafts) that he himself had first received from the Commission. As Seewald points out, Frings even used Ratzinger’s own texts which he later presented during those sessions of the Council at which Ratzinger himself was not present.

Again, through Seewald’s searching questions, we learn that it was Fring’s speech on 19 November 1961 in Genoa, Italy – almost a year before the official start of the Council in October of 1962 – that thus “gave a new orientation to the Council.” (p. 143) As Seewald says: “He [Frings]  gave the speech, but it was your text.” Pope John XXIII, as Seewald recounts it, invited Cardinal Frings for a conversation in which he told the cardinal: “Your Eminence, I have to thank you. This night, I have read your speech [of 19 November 1961]. What a happy concordance in the way we think.” Ratzinger confirms that he heard of this meeting with John XXIII from Cardinal Frings personally. Ratzinger himself was not to meet the pope personally, because “then he [John XXIII] was already seriously ill.” (p. 145)

The former pope also recalls how he was always present at the meetings at the Villa Mater Dei which were organized by Bishop Hermann Volk. Ratzinger says: “That is also where I then met Lubac….” When asked, how this first personal meeting was with de Lubac, Ratzinger answers: “It was dazzling for me to finally see him in person. He was very simple, very humble, and very gracious. It was immediately as if we were old friends.” Ratzinger adds that “he was always very heartfelt and truly brotherly. Daniélou also was a blithe and convival man (Jean Daniélou, a French cardinal).” In the former pope’s eyes, de Lubac was a very industrious man – just like the French Cardinal Yves Congar who “always continued to work without break at the Theological Commission.”

When asked whom of all the theologians he cherishes most, Ratzinger answers: “I would say Lubac and Balthasar.” He adds that it was “utmost exciting” to meet and speak “with such great figures” as Lubac,  Daniélou and Congar. He himself then participated at the sessions at St. Peter’s “from the moment when I became an official Council Theologian [appointed by the pope directly; Ratzinger was to become an official Council Theologian beginning at the Second Council Session (Sep.-Dec 1963) and remaining thereafter].” When coming first to Rome in these years, Ratzinger admits to having had a sort of an “anti-Roman sentiment. Not in the sense that we denied the primacy – the obedience toward the pope – but, rather, that one had, after all, a certain inner reserve with regard to the theology made in Rome. In this sense, there was a certain distancing. I myself, however, never went so far as my fellow student who said: ‘If at all, then I rather travel to Jerusalem than to Rome!’” (Benedict Admits Qualms of Conscience About Vatican II.)

How can any believing Catholic, no less a priest who fashioned himself a theologian, have an “anti-Roman” sentiment”? Theology is not “made” in Rome.

Then again, it is useful to be reminded for the umpteenth zillionth time that whole edifice of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which has not been in the past, is not now nor can ever be the Catholic Church, is based upon the “new theology’s” recrudescence of Modernism’s condemned precept of dogmatic evolutionism (that is it impossible to adequately express doctrine in human language, which is always the “prisoner” of historical conditions and thus subject to further modifications and adjustments according to the “needs” of “changed” circumstances) that was championed by none other than Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger and “Pope Benedict XVI."

The boldness of the conciliar revolutionaries is such that the notorious friend all things lavender and a firm supporter of the ideology of biological evolutionism and doctrinal evolutionism, Christoph “Cardinal” Schonborn, who just happens to be a disciple of one Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, can speak openly about “dogmatic evolution” after having discarded the pretense of trying to justify the unjustifiable by calling the heresies of Amoris Laetitia to be nothing other than an “organic development of doctrine”. Consider the following excerpts of an interview Schonborn gave recently to his “pope’s” fellow lay Jesuit, “Father” Anthony Spadaro, the editor of La Civilta Cattolica:

Some have spoken of AL as a minor document, a personal opinion of the Pope (so to speak) without full magisterial value. What value does this Exhortation possess? Is it an act of the magisterium?

This seems obvious, but it is good to specify it in these times, in order to prevent some voices from creating confusion among the faithful when they assert that this is not the case ...

It is obvious that this is an act of the magisterium: it is an Apostolic Exhortation. It is clear that the Pope is exercising here his role of pastor, of master and teacher of the faith, after having benefited from the consultation of the two Synods. I have no doubt that it must be said that this is a pontifical document of great quality, an authentic teaching of sacra doctrina, which leads us back to the contemporary relevance of the Word of God. I have read it many times, and each time I note the delicacy of its composition and an ever greater quantity of details that contain a rich teaching. There is no lack of passages in the Exhortation that affirm their doctrinal value strongly and decisively. This can be recognized from the tone and the content of what is said, when we relate these to the intention of the text – for example, when the Pope writes: “I urgently ask ...”,  “It is no longer possible to say ...”, “I have wanted to present to the entire Church ...”, and so on. AL is an act of the magisterium that makes the teaching of the Church present and relevant today. Just as we read the Council of Nicaea in the light of the Council of Constantinople, and Vatican I in the light of Vatican II, so now we must read the previous statements of the magisterium about the family in the light of the contribution made by AL. We are led in a living manner to draw a distinction between the continuity of the doctrinal principles and the discontinuity of perspectives or of historically conditioned expressions. This is the function that belongs to the living magisterium: to interpret authentically the Word of God, whether written or handed down.  (Schornborn Interview with Antonio Spadaro.)

 

What was it that Schonborn’s mentor said about attempting to make dogma the product of historically-conditioned expressions that must be reinterpreted in each era according to the circumstances of the times because human language can never fully communicate its supposed nuances?

1971: "In theses 10-12, the difficult problem of the relationship between language and thought is debated, which in post-conciliar discussions was the immediate departure point of the dispute. 

The identity of the Christian substance as such, the Christian 'thing' was not directly ... censured, but it was pointed out that no formula, no matter how valid and indispensable it may have been in its time, can fully express the thought mentioned in it and declare it unequivocally forever, since language is constantly in movement and the content of its meaning changes." (Fr. Ratzinger: Dogmatic formulas must always change.)

1990: "The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time." (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.  

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

No matter what euphemism has been used in the past to disguise what Christoph Schonborn is now able to admit openly (i.e. dogmatic evolutionism), the Catholic Church has condemned dogmatic evolutionism in no uncertain terms. Although the appendix below provides a review of some of these condemnations, here is an excerpt from Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

Hence it is quite impossible [the Modernists assert] to maintain that they [dogmatic statements] absolutely contain the truth: for, in so far as they are symbols, they are the images of truth, and so must be adapted to the religious sense in its relation to man; and as instruments, they are the vehicles of truth, and must therefore in their turn be adapted to man in his relation to the religious sense. But the object of the religious sense, as something contained in the absolute, possesses an infinite variety of aspects, of which now one, now another, may present itself. In like manner he who believes can avail himself of varying conditions. Consequently, the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. Nor, indeed, are they without forerunners in their doctrines, for it was of these that Our predecessor Pius IX wrote: 'These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.' On the subject of revelation and dogma in particular, the doctrine of the Modernists offers nothing new. We find it condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, where it is enunciated in these terms: ''Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the progress of human reason'; and condemned still more solemnly in the Vatican Council: ''The doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth.' Nor is the development of our knowledge, even concerning the faith, barred by this pronouncement; on the contrary, it is supported and maintained. For the same Council continues: 'Let intelligence and science and wisdom, therefore, increase and progress abundantly and vigorously in individuals, and in the mass, in the believer and in the whole Church, throughout the ages and the centuries -- but only in its own kind, that is, according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

The whole basis of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is based upon a warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, which is an attack upon the immutability of God and His Divine Revelation. Although the counterfeit church of conciliarism “exists” and appears to be the Catholic Church in the eyes of most people, the spotless, virginal mystical bride of Christ the King, her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, can never be headed by men who propagate anathematized propositions that put into question almost every point of Faith and Morals (inverting the ends proper to Holy Matrimony, “natural family planning,” Amoris Laetitia, etc) and presided over the construction and implementation of false, sacramentally invalid liturgical rites that are designed to reflect beliefs at odds with the Catholic Faith.

The aforementioned Cardinal Frings defended his vision of a “decentralized” and “democratic church” in a confrontation with Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani over the nature of the Holy Office then headed by Ottaviani during the proceedings of the “Second” Vatican Council on Friday, November 8, 1963:

VATICAN CITY (UPD—Two, leading Catholic cardinals engaged in a sharp verbal clash at the Ecumenical Council today over alleged abuses by the Holy Office. Involved in (he confrontation were Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, head of (he powerful Holy Office and leader of the conservatives at the council, and Joseph Cardinal Frings, archbishop of Cologne, Germany, and a leader of the liberal bloc.

Frings’ slashing attack on the Holy Office was greeted by loud applause from the council fathers despite a council rule against applause. Ottaviani’s reply was received in silence. The exchange was the sharpest and most direct of its kind to take place at the current council to date. It brought into the open, in brutally frank language, the deep-seated differences between liberals and conservatives at the council which previously had been discussed only in polite and indirect terms.

Calls Office Unfair

Cardinal Frings charged that the procedures of the Holy Office—the Vatican body which enforces orthodoxy in doctrine —“are not fair and just.” Referring to the inquisitorial functions of the Holy Office in weighing cases against Catholics suspected of heresy, Cardinal Frings said; “It is not right for one Vatican congregation to have the power to accuse, judge and condemn any individual without his having been heard in his own defense.” He said (he Holy Office “does harm to the faithful and causes scandal to those outside the church.”

Protests Criticism

Cardinal Ottaviani arose to “protest most vigorously” against Frings’ attack on the Holy Ofifce. He said the criticism was voiced from “lack of knowledge, not to say worse.” Ottaviani said the Pope himself must approve all actions of the Holy Office, that the office consults many theologians when a doctrinal case is pending, and "to say that anyone is condemned without discussion is completely out of harmony with the facts.”

The two cardinals also disagreed over the significance of test votes taken at the Ecumenical Council last week on a series of questions concerning the doctrine that bishops have a divine right to share with the Pope in the government of the church. Earlier, council sources had said that many American bishops were ready to back the proposal to set up an "episcopal senate” in Rome. The "senate” would be composed of bishops from all parts of the world, chosen to represent their national hierarchies. It would outrank the Roman Curia. (Cardinal Frings Attack the Holy Office. Cardinal Ottaviani Replies.) 

Well, it was clearly the case that Cardinal Frings very much wanted the church that could never exist, that is, a church based on Modernist principles that had been condemned in their nascent form by the [First] Vatican Council and by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Pope Saint Pius X prophetically described the “church as it exists today” in Pascendi Dominci Gregis:

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?  (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, No. 38)

The list of "reforms" that Pope Saint Pius X knew that the Modernists wanted to implement stands out as a prophetic warning as to the agenda that was formed by Modernist theologians in the years before the "Second" Vatican Council and became the fundamental basis for the whole ethos of conciliarism. Consider the prophetic nature of Pope Saint Pius X's list of "reforms" that the Modernists wanted to implement:

1) The passion for innovation. Innovation, which the Church has always eschewed, has become the very foundation of conciliarism. Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised novelty and innovation repeatedly, doing so during his now infamous December 22, 2005, Christmas address to his conciliar curia. Since when has this been the case in the history of the Catholic Church? It is standard practice in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and "innovation" is the hallmark of the carciature of conciliarism, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

2) "They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live." This is a cogent summary of the belief of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself, which he outlined in Principles of Catholic Theology and in his own autobiography, Milestones. Bergoglio has no regard for philosophy of any kind as he is moved solely by pure subjectivism without the window dressing of his predecessors "new theology."

3) "Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to harmonized with science and history." Thus it is, of course, that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI told us, both before and during his false "pontificate," that such things as Pope Pius IX's The Syllabus of Errors and even Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominci Gregis, among other encyclical letters and papal pronouncements (see Witness Against Benedict XVI: The Oath Against Modernism) itself served a useful purpose at one point in history but lose their binding force over time. In other words, we must harmonize Catholicism with the events of history (the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King, the institutionalization of Protestant "churches," the rise of the secular state) and not be "tied down" by a "time-centered" view of the Faith. As repetition is the mother of learning, perhaps it is good to repeat once again that this Modernist view of dogma was specifically condemned by the [First] Vatican Council. No Catholic is free to ignore these binding words and remain a Catholic in good standing:

For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

• not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
• but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
• Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1.)

4) "Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head." This describes the liturgical thrust of conciliarism quite accurately. Indeed, the last sentence in this sentence has particular application to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who was somewhat disposed to be "indulgent" to the symbolism of the liturgy but was nevertheless committed to "reforming" the conciliar "reform" Obviously, Jorge Mario Bergoglio comes from a more "liberated" background than his predecessor. The modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition can have its place, according to the falsehoods he published in Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, for those who are "attached" to it. Bergoglio/Francis has made sure, of course, that there is no turning back on the "reform" itself, including the reduction of the saints commemorated on conciliarism's universal calendar. Indeed, then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the following in Principles of Catholic Theology in 1982:

Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We cannot resist them too firmly. (pp. 389-390) 

5) "They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified." The conciliarists have summarized Pope Saint Pius X's description of their Modernist view of Church governance very succinctly: Collegiality. It is no accident that Giovanni Montini/Paul VI gave away the Papal Tiara, which is on display in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and that Albino Luciani/John Paul I and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II,Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio each refused to be crowned. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI went so far as to remove the tiara from his coat-of-arms, which is reflective of episcopal collegiality with his own bishops and a gesture in the direction of those steeped in the heresies of Photius, the Orthodox. And Jorge Mario Bergoglio has divested what little remained of "papal dignity" in the conciliar Petrine Ministry in the past sixty-two months. I mean, can anyone say "Plim Plim." What about Señor Wences?

6) "The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit." This is of the essence of Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965. And it is of the essence of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's belief that the the "Second" Vatican Council represented an "official reconciliation" with the principles of 1789. Just as a little reminder so that readers with short memories do not think that I am misrepresenting the thought of the man who does not believe it to be the mission of the Catholic Church to seek with urgency the conversion of Protestants and Jews and the Orthodox and all others who are outside her maternal bosom: 

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. From this perspective, too, we can understand the different emphases with which the individual parts of the Church entered into the discussion of the text. While German theologians were satisfied that their exegetical and ecumenical concepts had been incorporated, representatives of Latin American countries, in particular, felt that their concerns, too, had been addressed, topics proposed by Anglo-Saxon theologians likewise found strong expression, and representatives of Third World countries saw, in the emphasis on social questions, a consideration of their particular problems. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381-382)

Pope Saint Pius X wrote the following in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906 about those who would dare to contend that the Church had to "reconcile" herself to the separation of Church and State, which the Catholic Church condemned repeatedly and vigorously throughout her history prior to the "Second" Vatican Council:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

Pope Saint Pius X condemned as "absolutely false" the thesis that the State must be separated from the Church. Absolutely false. The conciliar "popes," including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, have accepted as true and good that which a canonized pope, repeating the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, which no one has any authority to contradict, condemned as absolutely false. Are you beginning to see, possibly, that there is a problem with the conciliarism in its entirety? Are you beginning to see, possibly, that there is no reconciling the unprecedented heresies, sacrileges, apostasies, blasphemies of novelties of conciliarism and conciliarists,  with the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church?

In addition to the above-noted paragraph in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope Saint Pius X went on to note the arrogance of the Modernists in their desire for novelty and in their contempt for scholastic theology and their efforts to view the Fathers in light of their own Modernist predilections:

Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war.Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science." They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.''  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, No. 42)

This paragraph is a ringing condemnation of the work of conciliarism and of its progenitors, the so-called "new theologians" (Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, et al.). Look at how Pope Saint Pius X zeroed in on the three things that Joseph Ratzinger spent nearly 400 pages trying to deconstruct and explain away in Principles of Catholic Theology: (1) The Scholastic Method of Philosophy; (2) The Authority and Tradition of the Fathers; and (3) the Magisterium of the Church  The then "Cardinal" Ratzinger had to rely upon his Hegelian view of the world to explain away dogmatic pronouncements and articles contained in the Deposit of Faith that constituted part of the Church's Ordinary Magisterium. 

The Syllabus of Errors? 

Well, right for its time perhaps, Ratzinger and other conciliarists say, but we can see now that it was a "hasty" and "superficial" overreaction to events of the day. Jorge Mario Bergoglio's solution to all of this? Simple. Don't even making a passing reference to the centenary of Pope Saint Pius X's death on August 20, 2014.

As Pope Saint Pius X noted; "They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all of its weight and authority." 

This is so very important. The conciliar popes have not used the word "tradition" to mean what Holy Mother Church has always taught it to mean. They have sought  to "weaken the force" and to "falsify the character of tradition" precisely so as to "rob it of all its weight and authority," considering the word "tradition" to be an empty vessel into which he can pour whatever meaning these apostates have believed  is appropriate for "modern man."

Pope Pope Pius XII, writing in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, explained the "new theology's" effort to hold Tradition of no account, preferring that own rationalism to a reliance upon the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church:

22. To return, however, to the new opinions mentioned above, a number of things are proposed or suggested by some even against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council's definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. They even wrongly speak of a human sense of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense, which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the Church which Christ Our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.

23. Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual. By means of this new exegesis the Old Testament, which today in the Church is a sealed book, would finally be thrown open to all the faithful. By this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.

24. Everyone sees how foreign all this is to the principles and norms of interpretation rightly fixed by our predecessors of happy memory, Leo XIII in his Encyclical "Providentissimus," and Benedict XV in the Encyclical "Spiritus Paraclitus," as also by Ourselves in the Encyclical "Divino Affflante Spiritu."

25. It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe, prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God has eternal and infallible foreknowedge of the free actions of men -- all this in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council[5] (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born just twenty-two years after the following letter was written by Gaetano Cardinal De Lai in 1914 to Father Angelo Roncalli, in whose heretical cradle Bergoglio was formed in his seminary days:

According to information that has come my way, I knew that you had been a reader of Duchesne [whose book, History of the Early Church, had been placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and used in Roncalli's seminary lectures] and other unbridled authors, and that on certain occasions you had shown yourself inclined to that school of thought which tends to empty out the value of Tradition and the authority of the past, a dangerous current which leads to fatal consequences. (quoted in Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki, Tumultuous Times, p. 297)

Do you see a pattern here?

Is it any wonder that the conciliarists, to show their utter contempt for Pope Saint Pius X, erected a mural of Angelo Roncalli to the right of the altar under which rests the sarcophagus of Pope Saint Pius X? It was their way of saying to the eternal foe of Modernism, "We win! We spit on you!"

Angelo Roncalli conceived of a “new church” that “tended to empty out the value of Traditioin and authority of the past,” Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria implemented this “new church,” Karol Josef Wojtyla championed the “new church’s” outreach to false religions, Joseph Alois Ratzinger sought to institutionalize his own “new theology” as the basis of the “new church’s” “renewed” doctrine and liturgy, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, completely faithful to the Roncalli-Montini revolution, is simply taking the “new church” to its logical conclusion as prophesied by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

No believing Catholic can accept the fact that the “church as it exists today,” replete with its countless “innovations” and “novelties,” is the same one instituted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is not.

Does, for instance, the presenter really believe that it is within the authority of the Catholic Church to invert the ends of Holy Matrimony?

Here is the teaching of the Catholic Church:

856. The primary object of marriage is the procreation and education of offspring; the secondary purpose is mutual assistance and the remedy of concupiscence. (This can be found on page 205 of the following link, which is the 1917 Code of Canon Law in English:  1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law.)

Here is what the conciliar revolutionaries teach:

Can.  1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized. (Canon 1055.1.)

The whole conciliar view of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is based on the concept of “personalism” as advanced by Father Herbert Doms and Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand that was condemned personally by Pope Pius XII on April 1, 1944:

Certain publications concerning the purposes of matrimony, and their interrelationship and order, have come forth within these last years which either assert that the primary purpose of matrimony is not the generation of offspring, or that the secondary purposes are not subordinate to the primary purpose, but are independent of it.

In these works, different primary purposes of marriage are designated by other writers, as for example: the complement and personal perfection of the spouses through a complete mutual participation in life and action; mutual love and union of spouses to be nurtured and perfected the psychic and bodily surrender of one’s own person; and many other such things.

In the same writings a sense is sometimes attributed to words in the current documents of the Church (as for example, primary, secondary purpose), which does not agree with these words according to the common usage by theologians.

 

This revolutionary way of thinking and speaking aims to foster errors and uncertainties, to avoid which the Eminent and Very Fathers of this supreme Sacred Congregation, charged with the guarding of faith and morals, in a plenary session on Wednesday, the 29th of March, 1944, when the question was proposed to them: “Whether the opinion of certain writers can be admitted, who either deny that the primary purpose of matrimony is the generation of children and raising offspring, or teach that the secondary purposes are not essentially subordinate to the primary purpose, but are equally first and independent,” have decreed that the answer must be: In the negative. (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–referred to as “Denziger,” by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, No. 2295, pp. 624-625.)

How can this change?

It cannot.

Yet it is that the presenter, to be faithful to his very correct articulation of the necessity of submitting to the Sovereign Pontiff, must accept this change, which can never issue forth from the Catholic Church.

It is night and day, black and white. The counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church. Sedevacantists do not pine for an "ideal" church, but the one that has always exist and can never adapt or alter her doctrines.

Pope Pius XI explained that the lapse of the centuries does not affect the nature of Holy Mother Church’s inherent stability or her fealty to her own Divine Constitution:

10. 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.”[20] 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.”[21] For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one,[22] compacted and fitly joined together,[23] 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.[24] (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

The conciliar church is the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church. While the apostates of this false church occupy the chancery offices and church buildings of the Catholic Church, they used every Modernist and Judeo-Masonic weapon at their disposal to make it appear that everything about the Catholic Faith is disposable and thus subject to change.

Although this point will be examined in some detail later as everything about the counterfeit church of conciliarism is an “innovation” that has nothing to do with the true Faith, permit me to illustrate it briefly by quoting the promoter of the “cause” of the Marxist stooge named Oscar Romero:

He was killed at the altar,” Archbishop Paglia said, instead of when he was an easier target at home or on the street. “Through him, they wanted to strike the Church that flowed from the Second Vatican Council." (Romero To Be "Beatified" Soon.)

Whether or not he realized it, “Archbishop” Vincenzo Paglia made quite a statement in 2015 by stating that his church is the one that flowed from the “Second” Vatican Council and not the Wounded Side of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as Blood and Water flowed forth out from the cardiac sac surrounding His Most Sacred Heart. As a conciliar presbyter noted to me in an e-mail in 2004, the “Second” Vatican Council represented what he termed was an “ecclesiogensis,” that is, the springing forth of a new church that had little to do with the one that preceded it.

This is indeed quite correct. What has flowed forth from the “Second” Vatican Council and the “magisterium” of the conciliar “popes” has been nothing other than a polluted stream of apostasy that originated from the poisoned wells of Modernity and Modernism. Countless hundreds of millions of people have been poisoned by it enough to have had their minds poisoned against any mention of the “old faith,” especially as expressed and protected in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.

As noted above, the first in the current line of conciliar antipopes sought to give Modernist cardinals and bishops a determining voice at the “Second” Vatican Council, whose work of destruction in its first few weeks was evident to the late Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton:

Within just a few weeks after the opening of Vatican II, the orthodox American theologian and council peritus Mgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton made the following comments in his diary: “This is going to mark the end of the Catholic religion as we have known it…. If I did not believe God, I would be convinced that the Catholic Church was about to end” (Diary entries for Oct. 31 and Nov. 23, 1962). Fenton’s personal diaries detail some of the struggles that took place behind the scenes of the council and are well worth a read: The Vatican II Diaries of Mgr. Joseph Fenton (As found at Novus Ordo Watch.)

The presenter whose voice is featured on the 2014 video presentation used, perhaps without meaning to do so, a straw man argument by attempting to state that sedevacantists desire a “church that once existed” rather that the one that exists. There is only one Church, the Catholic Church, and she is stable in her doctrines and in her worship. Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton could not reconcile what he heard at the “Second” Vatican Council with the Catholic Faith, and it way past time for anyone to attempt to do so now, admitting, quite of course, I tried to do so for decades and used some of the same—if not the exact—arguments used by the presenter against sedevacantism. I was wrong. Those who criticized me were correct. Truth must be recognized and defended without regard for the consequences.

The Wheat and the Cockle

The presenter also used Our Lord’s parable of the “wheat and the cockle” to describe the situation in the “church that exists.” However, this parable refers to the fact that there will always be sinners within the Church Militant here on earth. Each of us is a sinner. We have wheat and cockle within our own souls, and we seek to have the cockle rooted out every time that we make a good, integral Confession of our sins to a true priest. Others must bear with us, especially our family members, and we must bear with others.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has permitted sinners to live with their fellow sinners. As the late Father John A. Hardon, S.J., noted in a conference in Sterling Heights, Michigan, twenty-two years ago, “God permits us to sin so that we can forgive each other. Let me repeat myself: God permits us to sin so that we can forgive one another.” We must pray for each other, especially for those from whom we may be estranged for one reason or another.

This does not mean, however, that Holy Mother Church herself can be governed by infidels to whom Catholics are duty-bound to submit.

Father Louis J. Campbell, the pastor of Saint Jude Shrine in Stafford, Texas, explained the true meaning of Our Lord’s parable of the wheat and cockle as it relates to Holy Mother Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal in a sermon he delivered on Sunday, November 10, 2013, the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Saint Andrew Avellino:

The parable Jesus tells us today about the bad seed growing alongside the good may not surprise us, because we know very well that there are bad people in the world along with the good. But when we take a careful look we see that Jesus is not talking about the world, but about the Church. Within the field of the Church herself, the devil has planted his bad seed, of which Judas is the prototype: “And during the supper, the devil… already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him…” (Jn.13:2).  

Of course, Our Lord was not just talking about apostolic times, but about the Church in every age, until the harvest. But if the “weeds” have not yet been gathered into bundles to burn, that means they are still among us, plotting their evil schemes to ensnare the innocent, and provoking revolution.   

“How then does it have weeds?” There is a Revolution within the Church. A revolution is the complete overthrow of the former order and the establishment of a new one. Such was the French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the monarchy and the Church in France, executing the innocent king and queen, thousands of bishops, priests, and religious, and hundreds of thousands of innocent French citizens. The Revolution was ultimately the work of Freemasonry, which had already been condemned by the Church half a century before. 

The Revolutionaries were not about to stop there. An apostate priest named Canon Roca was already saying at the end of the 1800s: “The liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Church will shortly undergo a transformation at an ecumenical council... the Papacy will fall; it will die under the hallowed knife which the Fathers of the last Council will forge. The papal Caesar is a host (victim) crowned for the sacrifice” (Bishop Rudolph Graber, Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, p. 35). A prominent French Freemason (Yves Marsaudon, Ecumenism as Seen by a Traditional Freemason), wrote that as of 1908: “the goal is no longer the destruction of the Church but rather to make use of it by infiltrating it” (Bishop Graber, pp. 38-39). 

This had already been the plan of the Masonic secret societies for generations. They were to lay snares for the clergy in the sacristies, seminaries and monasteries, which would have them following “a revolution dressed in papal tiara and cope,” thinking they were following the banner of the Apostolic Keys. (Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita).    

Freemasonry being the “Mother”, as Pope Pius XII called it, Communism was a “spin-off” of what had happened earlier in France. In the year 1936 orders were issued from the Communist Party in Moscow that suitable young men be secretly prepared to enter seminaries and monasteries to be ordained as priests. Manning Johnson, a former official of the Communist Party in America gave the following testimony in 1953 to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): 

“The Communist leadership in the United States realized that the infiltration tactic in this country would have to adapt itself to American conditions… In the earliest stages it was determined that with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in the paths conducive to Communist purposes… This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our Communist expectations.” 

Mrs. Bella Dodd, also a prominent member of the Communist Party, was converted to Catholicism in 1952, and began to reveal the tactics of the Party: “In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within… Right now they are in the highest places in the Church.” She said that in the future “you will not recognize the Catholic Church.” This was a dozen years before Vatican II began.  

“The whole idea,” according to someone who attended one of Dodd’s talks (Bro. Joseph Natale) “was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the Faith through promotion of a pseudo-religion: something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing. Once the Faith was destroyed, she explained that there would be a guilt complex introduced into the Church… to label the ‘Church of the past’ as being oppressive, authoritarian, full of prejudices, arrogant in claiming to be the sole possessor of truth, and responsible for the divisions of religious bodies throughout the centuries. This would be necessary in order to shame the Church leaders into an ‘openness to the world,’ and to a more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church.”

Have we not been witnesses? The implanted “weeds,” Masonic and/or Communist bishops and cardinals, made their way in 1961 to Rome for the opening of Vatican II, where they joined their fellow “weeds” in wresting control of the proceedings from the true bishops and cardinals, carrying out their program of destroying the faith of the people. Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens boasted that Vatican II was 1789 (the French Revolution) within the Church. After the Council, the Grand Orient (Masonic) Lodge in France reported a “gigantic revolution in the Church” calling it “a prelude to victory” (Bishop Graber, p. 71).  

Priests, bishops, and the papacy itself have been the primary victims of the Revolution. But their disastrous failure was foretold in Holy Scripture, and was known to the early Church. The great Cardinal Manning (1808-1892), writing of the teachings of the early Church Fathers, predicted:  

“Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism… Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible, hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.” (Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90). 

We can take some comfort in the fact that the “church” which we now see falling into ruin is not the true Church, but the false Masonic church. Our greatest defense against the devil and his false church is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But we also have the Holy Rosary, through which Our Lady becomes “as awe-inspiring as bannered troops.” May she, by the power of God, and with St. Michael and all the Holy Angels, and by our prayers, be victorious in the battle! (For a longer excerpt from Cardinal Manning’ reflection on Antichrist, please see Appendix B below)

Father Campbell, who was born on November 1, 1932, and ordained for the Order of Saint Augustine in Nova Scotia, Canada, on September 3, 1961, the Feast of Pope Saint Pius X, actually spent seven years with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter before coming to realize in 2001 that the conciliar church is the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church. He told us in 2006 that he was only after he left the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter that he was able to think clearly. His example should be followed by the presenter, whose “straw man” argument would have his hearers believe that sedevacantists pine for a church whose time has come and gone Wrong.

Antichrist is not going to give us his calling card nor will he emblazon his credentials for all to see. Catholics must use the faculty of reason in conjunction with the sensus Catholicus to recognize that which is the opposite of Christ, and that which is opposite of Christ cannot come from the Catholic Church nor a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter.

Concluding Thoughts

We must remember that God has indeed permitted large numbers of people in the past to be deceived.

God permitted one hundred percent of the human race to be deceived in the Garden of Eden.

God permitted all but eight members of the human race to be deceived and deluded prior to the Great Flood.

Almost all of the Chosen People who had been led out of their bondage to the slavery of the Egyptian Pharaoh by Moses built and worshiped a molten calf whilst Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai.

All but a handful of people stood by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He suffered and died for us on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

All but a handful of bishops remained faithful to the Church during the Arian heresy that was fought by Saint Athanasius. Saint Jerome, of those who fought Arianism, wrote "The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian."

All but one bishop, Saint John Fisher of Rochester, England, defected from the Faith at the time of the Protestant Revolt in England when King Henry VIII took this thoroughly Catholic country out of the Church.

All but thirty bishops defected from the Faith at the time Queen Elizabeth I took England out of the Church once again in the 1560s following the brief restoration that took place under the reign of her half-sister, Queen Mary, from 1553 to 1558.

The "mainstream" is not be followed. We need apostolic courage in these times of apostasy and betrayal. God's greater honor and glory must be defended against the against of men who have proved themselves to be precursors of the Antichrist.

God does indeed permit massive numbers of people to be deceived. His greater honor and glory are defended in most cases by a relative handful of the most unlikely souls, whom He raises up to confound the mighty and the powerful and the respected.

How do we think that we are going to recognize, no less resist and reject, the Antichrist when he comes when we are so complacent and smug in the face of the groundwork that is being laid by his conciliar minions for his coming? Will the emotionalism of sentimentality and the delusion of positivism not prevail then in the minds and hearts of most men?

The Catholic Church cannot be stained by any taint of error, as pope after pope has taught us:

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

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which  it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.) 

Please note that Pope Gregory XVI wrote that the truth can be found in the Catholic Church without "even a slight tarnish of error."

Please note that Pope Leo XIII stressed that the Catholic Church "makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the command which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity."

Please note that that Pope Pius XI explained that the Catholic Church brings forth her teaching "with ease and security to the knowledge of men."

Anyone who says that this has been done by the counterfeit church of concilairism, which has made its "reconciliation" with the false principles of Modernity that leave no room for the confessional Catholic civil state and the Social Reign of Christ the King, is not thinking too clearly (and that is as about as charitably as I can put the matter). If the conciliar church has brought forth its teaching "with ease and security to the knowledge of men," why is there such disagreement even between the "progressive" conciliarists and "conservative" conciliarists concerning the proper "interpretation" of the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath? Or does this depend upon what one means by "ease and security"?

Antichrist has shown us his calling card. To pretend that this is not so at this late date is an exercise in self-delusion.

Now, accepting the truth of our situation makes us not one whit better than anyone else. 

Indeed, there are a handful of  sedevacantists who are so oblivious to the human sense in their dealing with others on a one-on-one basis that they make themselves to appear to be "so right that they are wrong," to paraphrase the best teacher I ever had, a professor at Saint John's University who convinced me to pursue a college teaching career in the summer of 1972, meaning that they simply do not know when to let well enough be and simply let souls find the truth on their own as they respond to the graces sent to them by Our Lady.

Each of us has enough sins of our own to make reparation for without heaping more hot coals upon our souls by casting stones at those who may be as firm in their rejecting what we tell them as many of us were for decades when we heard these same truths from the mouths of others who were truly concerned about our spiritual well-being. We must pray for each other in this time of apostasy and betrayal, trusting in the care of our dear Blessed Mother, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, to help us and others negotiate the troubling waters that conciliarism has produced.

We separate ourselves from the conciliarists because they offend God by defecting from the Faith, starting with their rejection of the nature of dogmatic truth and their making complex what it is: the knowledge of Him that He has deposited in Holy Mother Church.

Indeed, Jorge Mario Bergoglio makes light of heresy and attacks those who point out his own multiple heresies that expelled him from the bosom of Holy Mother Church long, long before his selection as the successor to Antipope Benedict XVI.

We, on the other hand, must hate heresy as God Himself hates it. Heresy is offense against God in that it is a rejection, whether in whole or in part of Divine Revelation, which is composed of Sacred Scripture and Sacred (Apostolic) Tradition.

The great Father Frederick Faber, who wrote many books in the sixteen years of his priestly life from the time of his conversion in 1848 to the time of his death in 1854, explained why this is so when providing a meditation on the Sixth Dolor of Our Lady, that is, the scene of the Pieta:

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself? (Father Frederick Faber,The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has been awash in heresy from its beginnings as it is premised upon Modernism’s condemned precept of “the evolution of dogma” that is nothing other than a denial of the very immutability of God Himself. It is thus no exaggeration to state that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is premised upon a denial of God’s very Divine Nature as He has revealed It to us exclusively through His Catholic Church.

From the denial of God’s Divine Nature flows quite logically the heresies associated with the Divine Constitution of his Holy Catholic Church by means of the “new ecclesiology,” false ecumenism, “inter-religious prayer” services and “episcopal collegiality. Similarly, the denial of God’s Divine Nature is responsible for the rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King over men and their nations in favor of the heresy of “religious liberty” that is so responsible for producing havoc all throughout the supposedly “civilized world,” starting in the new places that gave birth to it, the United States of America and the “First Republic of France.”

The counterfeit church of conciliarism is awash in abominable sacrileges, starting with the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service and its other false sacramentally barren rites (“episcopal consecration,” “priestly ordination,” “confirmation,” “anointing of the sick”) and the wretched displays of wanton debauchery spawned thereby.

Ah, but our relatives, former friends and acquaintances think that we are the problem for holding fast to the truths of the true Faith that Jorge despises:

We must always remember these words of Saint Athanasius:

May God console you!...What saddens you...is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises -- but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: What is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle? The one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?

True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there -- they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way...

You are the ones who are happy. You who remain within the Church by your faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to us from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis.

No one, ever, will prevail against your faith, beloved brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.

Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from It and going astray.

Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ. (Letter of St. Athanasius to his flock.)

"What is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in this struggle? The one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?"

These are words to remember. No place, not even places where the Holy Mass was once offered by true bishops and true priests, is more important than the Faith. We must seek out that true Faith today as we make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds, recognizing, of course, that we are not one whit better than anyone else and that we have much for which to make reparation as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.

Every Rosary we pray, offered up to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will help to make reparation for our sins, which are so responsible for the state of the Church Militant on earth and for that of the world-at-large, and those of the whole world, including the conciliarists who blaspheme God regularly by means of lies such as the "hermeneutic of continuity” and the alleged need to “accompany” sinners who have no intention of repenting their sins or amending their lives of perdition.

The conciliarists lose in the end. Christ the King will emerge triumphant once again as the fruit of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother and our Queen, Mary Immaculate. The Church Militant will rise again from her mystical death and burial.

Keep praying. Keep sacrificing. Keep fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message in your own lives.

August Queen of Heaven, sovereign mistress of the angels, thou who from the beginning hast received from God the power and the mission to crush the head of Satan: we humbly implore thee to send thy holy legions, so that under thy command and by thy power they may drive the devils away, everywhere fight them subduing their boldness, and thrust them down into the abyss.

Who is like unto God?

O good and tender Mother, thou willst always be our love and our hope.

O divine Mother send thy holy angels to defend me and to drive from away from me the cruel enemy.

Holy Angels and Archangels, defend us and keep us.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary right now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

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.

Appendix A

Pope Paul IV’s Cum Ex Apostolatus, February 15, 1559

By virtue of the Apostolic office which, despite our unworthiness, has been entrusted to Us by God, We are responsible for the general care of the flock of the Lord. Because of this, in order that the flock may be faithfully guarded and beneficially directed, We are bound to be diligently watchful after the manner of a vigilant Shepherd and to ensure most carefully that certain people who consider the study of the truth beneath them should be driven out of the sheepfold of Christ and no longer continue to disseminate error from positions of authority. We refer in particular to those who in this age, impelled by their sinfulness and supported by their cunning, are attacking with unusual learning and malice the discipline of the orthodox Faith, and who, moreover, by perverting the import of Holy Scripture, are striving to rend the unity of the Catholic Church and the seamless tunic of the Lord.

1.In assessing Our duty and the situation now prevailing, We have been weighed upon by the thought that a matter of this kind [i.e. error in respect of the Faith] is so grave and so dangerous that the Roman Pontiff,who is the representative upon earth of God and our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who holds the fulness of power over peoples and kingdoms, who may judge all and be judged by none in this world, may nonetheless be contradicted if he be found to have deviated from the Faith. Remembering also that, where danger is greater, it must more fully and more diligently be counteracted, We have been concerned lest false prophets or others, even if they have only secular jurisdiction, should wretchedly ensnare the souls of the simple, and drag with them into perdition, destruction and damnation countless peoples committed to their care and rule, either in spiritual or in temporal matters; and We have been concerned also lest it may befall Us to see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, in the holy place. In view of this, Our desire has been to fulfil our Pastoral duty, insofar as, with the help of God, We are able, so as to arrest the foxes who are occupying themselves in the destruction of the vineyard of the Lord and to keep the wolves from the sheepfolds, lest We seem to be dumb watchdogs that cannot bark and lest We perish with the wicked husbandman and be compared with the hireling.

2 Hence, concerning these matters, We have held mature deliberation with our venerable brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church; and, upon their advice and with their unanimous agreement, we now enact as follows: In respect of each and every sentence of excommunication, suspension, interdict and privation and any other sentences, censures and penalties against heretics or schismatics, enforced and promulgated in any way whatsoever by any of Our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs, or by any who were held to be such (even by their "litterae extravagantes" i.e. private letters), or by the sacred Councils received by the Church of God, or by decrees of the Holy Fathers and the statutes, or by the sacred Canons and the Constitutions and Apostolic Ordinations - all these measures, by Apostolic authority, We approve and renew, that they may and must be observed in perpetuity and, if perchance they be no longer in lively observance, that they be restored to it. Thus We will and decree that the aforementioned sentences, censures and penalties be incurred without exception by all members of the following categories:

(i) Anysoever who, before this date, shall have been detected to have deviated from the Catholic Faith, or fallen into any heresy, or incurred schism, or provoked or committed either or both of these, or who have confessed to have done any of these things, or who have been convicted of having done any of these things.

(ii) Anysoever who (which may God, in His clemency and goodness to all, deign to avert) shall in the future so deviate or fall into heresy, or incur schism, or shall provoke or commit either or both of these.

(iii) Anysoever who shall be detected to have so deviated, fallen, incurred, provoked or committed, or who shall confess to have done any of these things, or who shall be convicted of having done any of these things.

   These sanctions, moreover, shall be incurred by all members of these categories, of whatever status, grace, order, condition and pre-eminence they may be, even if they be endowed with the Episcopal, Archiepiscopal, Patriarchal, Primatial or some other greater Ecclesiastical dignity, or with the honour of the Cardinalate and of the Universal Apostolic See by the office of Legate, whether temporary or permanent, or if they be endowed with even worldly authority or excellence, as Count, Baron, Marquis, Duke, King or Emperor.

   All this We will and decree.

3. Nonetheless, We also consider it proper that those who do not abandon evil deeds through love of virtue should be deterred therefrom by fear of punishment; and We are aware that Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals and Legates, Counts, Barons, Marquises, Dukes, Kings and Emperors (who ought to teach others and offer them a good example in order to preserve them in the Catholic Faith), by failing in their duty sin more gravely than others; since they not only damn themselves, but also drag with them into perdition and into the pit of death countless other people entrusted to their care or rule, or otherwise subject to them, by their like counsel and agreement.

   Hence, by this Our Constitution which is to remain valid in perpetuity, in abomination of so great a crime (than which none in the Church of God can be greater or more pernicious) by the fulness of our Apostolic Power, We enact, determine, decree and define (since the aforesaid sentences, censures and penalties are to remain in efficacious force and strike all those whom they are intended to strike) that:

(i) each and every member of the following categories - Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals, Legates, Counts, Barons, Marquises, Dukes, Kings and Emperors - who:

(a)hitherto (as We have already said) have been detected, or have confessed to have, or have been convicted of having, deviated [i.e. from the Catholic Faith], or fallen into heresy or incurred schism or provoked or committed either or both of these;

(b) in the future also shall [so] deviate, or fall into heresy, or incur schism, or provoke or commit either or both of these, or shall be detected or shall confess to have, or shall be convicted of having [so] deviated, or fallen into heresy, or incurred schism, or provoked or committed either or both of these;

(c) since in this they are rendered more inexcusable than the rest in addition to the aforementioned sentences, censures and penalties, shall also automatically, without any exercise of law or application of fact, be thoroughly, entirely and perpetually deprived of:- their Orders and Cathedrals, even Metropolitan, Patriarchal and Primatial Churches, the honour of the Cardinalate and the office of any embassy whatsoever, not to mention both active and passive voting rights, all authority, Monasteries, benefices and Ecclesiastical offices, be they functional or sinecures, secular or religious of whatsoever Order, which they may have obtained by any concessions whatsoever, or by Apostolic Dispensations to title, charge and administration or otherwise howsoever, and in which or to which they may have any right whatsoever, likewise any whatsoever fruits, returns or annual revenues from like fruits, returns and revenues reserved for and assigned to them, as well as Countships, Baronies, Marquisates, Dukedoms, Kingships and Imperial Power;

(ii) that, moreover, they shall be unfit and incapable in respect of these things and that they shall be held to be backsliders and subverted in every way, just as if they had previously abjured heresy of this kind in public trial; that they shall never at any time be able to be restored, returned, reinstated or rehabilitated to their former status or Cathedral, Metropolitan, Patriarchal and Primatial Churches, or the Cardinalate, or other honour, any other dignity, greater or lesser, any right to vote, active or passive, or authority, or Monasteries and benefices, or Countships, Baronies, Marquisates, Dukedoms, Kingships and positions of Imperial power; but rather that they shall be abandoned to the judgement of the secular power to be punished after due consideration, unless there should appear in them signs of true penitence and the fruits of worthy repentance, and, by the kindness and clemency of the See itself, they shall have been sentenced to sequestration in any Monastery or other religious house in order to perform perpetual penance upon the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction;

(iii) that all such individuals also shall be held, treated and reputed as such by everyone, of whatsoever status, grade, order, condition or pre-eminence he may be and whatsoever excellence may be his, even Episcopal, Archiepiscopal, Patriarchal and Primatial or other greater Ecclesiastical dignity and even the honour of the Cardinalate, or secular, even the authority of Count, Baron, Marquis, Duke, King or Emperor, and as such must be avoided and must be deprived of the sympathy of all natural kindness.

4. [By this Our Constitution, which is to remain valid in perpetuity, We] further enact, determine, decree and define:] that those who shall have claimed to have the right of patronage or of nominating suitable persons to Cathedral, Metropolitan, Patriarchal and Primatial Churches, or to Monasteries or other Ecclesiastical benefices which may be vacant by privation of this kind (in order that those which shall have been vacant for a long time may not be exposed to the unfit, but, having been rescued from enslavement to heretics, may be granted to suitable persons who would faithfully direct their people in the paths of justice), shall be bound to present other persons suitable to Churches, Monasteries and benefices of this kind, to Us, or to the Roman Pontiff at that time existing, within the time determined by law, or by their concordats, or by compacts entered into with the said See; and that, if they shall not have done so when the said period shall have elapsed, the full and free disposition of the aforesaid Churches, Monasteries and benefices shall by the fulness of the law itself devolve upon Us or upon the aforesaid Roman Pontiff.

5. [By this Our Constitution,] moreover, [which is to remain valid in perpetuity, We] also [enact, determine, decree and define:] as follows concerning those who shall have presumed in any way knowingly to receive, defend, favour, believe or teach the teaching of those so apprehended, confessed or convicted:

(i) they shall automatically incur sentence of excommunication;(ii) they shall be rendered infamous;

(iii) they shall be excluded on pain of invalidity from any public or private office, deliberation, Synod, general or provincial Council and any conclave of Cardinals or other congregation of the faithful, and from any election or function of witness, so that they cannot take part in any of these by vote, in person, by writings, representative or by any agent;

(iv) they shall be incapable of making a will;

(v) they shall not accede to the succession of heredity;

(vi) no one shall be forced to respond to them concerning any business;

(vii) if perchance they shall have been Judges, their judgements shall have no force, nor shall any cases be brought to their hearing.;

(viii) if they shall have been Advocates, their pleading shall nowise be received;

(ix) if they shall have been Notaries, documents drafted by them shall be entirely without strength or weight;

(x) clerics shall be automatically deprived of each and every Church, even Cathedral, Metropolitan, Patriarchal, Primatial, and likewise of dignities, Monasteries, benefices and Ecclesiastical offices, and even, as has been already mentioned, of qualifications, howsoever obtained by them;

(xi) laymen, moreover, in the same way - even if they be qualified, as already described, or endowed with the aforesaid dignities or anysoever Kingdoms, Duchies, Dominions, Fiefs and temporal goods possessed by them;

(xii) finally, all Kingdoms, Duchies, Dominions, Fiefs and goods of this kind shall be confiscated, made public and shall remain so, and shall be made the rightful property of those who shall first occupy them if these shall be sincere in faith, in the unity of the Holy Roman Church and under obedience to Us and to Our successors the Roman Pontiffs canonically entering office.

6. In addition, [by this Our Constitution, which is to remain valid in perpetuity We enact, determine, decree and define:] that if ever at any time it shall appear that any Bishop, even if he be acting as an Archbishop, Patriarch or Primate; or any Cardinal of the aforesaid Roman Church, or, as has already been mentioned, any legate, or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy;

(i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless;

(ii) it shall not be possible for it to acquire validity (nor for it to be said that it has thus acquired validity) through the acceptance of the office, of consecration, of subsequent authority, nor through possession of administration, nor through the putative enthronement of a Roman Pontiff, or Veneration, or obedience accorded to such by all, nor through the lapse of any period of time in the foregoing situation;

(iii) it shall not be held as partially legitimate in any way;

(iv) to any so promoted to be Bishops, or Archbishops, or Patriarchs, or Primates or elevated as Cardinals, or as Roman Pontiff, no authority shall have been granted, nor shall it be considered to have been so granted either in the spiritual or the temporal domain;(v) each and all of their words, deeds, actions and enactments, howsoever made, and anything whatsoever to which these may give rise, shall be without force and shall grant no stability whatsoever nor any right to anyone;

(vi) those thus promoted or elevated shall be deprived automatically, and without need for any further declaration, of all dignity, position, honour, title, authority, office and power.

7. Finally, [by this Our Constitution, which is to remain valid in perpetuity, We] also [enact, determine, define and decree]: that any and all persons who would have been subject to those thus promoted or elevated if they had not previously deviated from the Faith, become heretics, incurred schism or provoked or committed any or all of these, be they members of anysoever of the following categories: the Cardinals, even those who shall have taken part in the election of this very Pontiff previously deviating from the Faith or heretical or schismatical, or shall otherwise have consented and vouchsafed obedience to him and shall have venerated him;

Castellans, Prefects, Captains and Officials, even of Our Beloved City and of the entire Ecclesiastical State, even if they shall be obliged and beholden to those thus promoted or elevated by homage, oath or security; shall be permitted at any time to withdraw with impunity from obedience and devotion to those thus promoted or elevated and to avoid them as warlocks, heathens, publicans, and heresiarchs (the same subject persons, nevertheless, remaining bound by the duty of fidelity and obedience to any future Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates, Cardinals and Roman Pontiff canonically entering).

   To the greater confusion, moreover, of those thus promoted or elevated, if these shall have wished to prolong their government and authority, they shall be permitted to request the assistance of the secular arm against these same individuals thus promoted or elevated; nor shall those who withdraw on this account, in the aforementioned circumstances, from fidelity and obedience to those thus promoted and elevated, be subject, as are those who tear the tunic of the Lord, to the retribution of any censures or penalties.

8. [The provisions of this Our Constitution, which is to remain valid in perpetuity are to take effect] notwithstanding any Constitutions, Apostolic Ordinations, privileges, indults or Apostolic Letters, whether they be to these same Bishops, Archbishops, Patriarchs, Primates and Cardinals or to any others, and whatsoever may be their import and form, and with whatsoever sub-clauses or decrees they may have been granted, even "motu proprio" and by certain knowledge, from the fulness of the Apostolic power or even consistorially or otherwise howsoever; and even if they have been repeatedly approved and renewed,have been included in the corpus of the Law or strengthened by any capital conclaves whatsoever (even by oath) or by Apostolic confirmation or by anysoever other endorsements or if they were legislated by ourself. By this present document instead of by express mention, We specially and expressly derogate the provisions of all these by appropriate deletion and word-for-word substitution, so that these may otherwise remain in force.

9. In order, however, that this document may be brought to the notice of all whom it concerns, We wish it or a transcription of it (to which, when made by the hand of the undersigned Public Notary and fortified by the seal of any person established in ecclesiastical dignity, We decree that complete trust must be accorded) to be published and affixed in the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles in this City and on the doors of the Apostolic Chancery and in the pavilion of the Campus Florae by some of our couriers; [we] will [further] that a quantity of copies affixed in this place should be distributed, and that publication and affixing of this kind should suffice and be held as right, solemn and legitimate, and that no other publication should be required or awaited.

10. No one at all, therefore, may infringe this document of our approbation, re-introduction, sanction, statute and derogation of wills and decrees, or by rash presumption contradict it. If anyone, however, should presume to attempt this, let him know that he is destined to incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul.

Given in Rome at Saint Peter's in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1559, 15th February, in the fourth year of our Pontificate.

+ I, Paul, Bishop of the Catholic Church of Rome

Appendix B

From Henry Edward Cardinal Manning’s The Present Crisis of the Holy See

As the wicked did not prevail against Him [our Lord Jesus Christ] even when they bound Him with cords, dragged Him to the judgment, blindfolded His eyes, mocked Him as a false King, smote Him on the head as a false Prophet, led Him away, crucified Him, and in the mastery of their power seemed to have absolute dominion over Him, so that He lay ground down and almost annihilated under their feet; and as, at that very time when He was dead and buried out of their sight, He was conqueror over all, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, and was crowned, glorified, and invested with His royalty, and reigns supreme, King of kings and Lord of lords,— even so shall it be with His Church: though for a time persecuted, and, to the eyes of man, overthrown and trampled on, dethroned, despoiled, mocked, and crushed, yet in that high time of triumph the gates of hell shall not prevail. There is in store for the Church of God a resurrection and an ascension, a royalty and a dominion, a recompense of glory for all it has endured. Like Jesus, it needs must suffer on the way to its crown; yet crowned it shall be with Him eternally. Let no one, then, be scandalised if the prophecy speak of sufferings to come. We are fond of imagining triumphs and glories for the Church on earth,— that the Gospel is to be preached to all nations, and the world to be converted, and all enemies subdued, and I know not what,— until some ears are impatient of hearing that there is in store for the Church a time of terrible trial: and so we do as the Jews of old, who looked for a conqueror, a king, and for prosperity; and when their Messias came in humility and in passion, they did not know Him. So, I am afraid, many among us intoxicate their minds with the visions of success and victory, and cannot endure the thought that there is a time of persecution yet to come for the Church of God….

The holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of Antichrist, and of [the] prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know, and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church— all of them unanimously,— say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of Antichrist, the holy sacrifice of the altar will cease. In the work on the end of the world, ascribed to St. Hippolytus, after a long description of the afflictions of the last days, we read as follows: “The Churches shall lament with a great lamentation, for there shall be offered no more oblation, nor incense, nor worship acceptable to God. The sacred buildings of the churches shall be as hovels; and the precious body and blood of Christ shall not be manifest in those days; the Liturgy shall be extinct; the chanting of psalms shall cease; the reading of Holy Scripture shall be heard no more. But there shall be upon men darkness, and mourning upon mourning, and woe upon woe.” Then, the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible, hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking-places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries….

The Word of God tells us that towards the end of time the power of this world will became so irresistible and so triumphant that the Church of God will sink underneath its hand — that the Church of God will receive no more help from emperors, or kings, or princes, or legislatures, or nations, or peoples, to make resistance against the power and the might of its antagonist. It will be deprived of protection. It will be weakened, baffled, and prostrate, and will lie bleeding at the feet of the powers of this world. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90).