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The Four Marks
The marks by which
men will know His Church are four: one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic John S. Daly The Impossible
Crisis (Text)
2002
Conference (Audio, off-site) John Daly Born : 1963, England. Lives : France. Family : married with eight children. University: Cambridge; academic awards : Entrance
Exhibition (1982) and Scholarship (1983) Profession : translator. Specialist fields : Canon Law and Moral Theology. Author and translator of several books and numerous
articles since 1983. Other activities : President of Catholic publishing house
Tradibooks -- www.Tradibooks.com Contact : verbum@free.fr “The Impossible Crisis”
© 2009 John S. Daly First published in The Four
Marks as a series beginning in April 2009. “The Impossible Crisis” was
first presented as a talk by John Daly at a seminar in Rome, New York in
2002. Reverend Father,
ladies and gentlemen, This conference is dedicated to setting out
the arguments in favour of sedevacantism. Before starting, I should like to make sure that we
all know what sedevacantism is, and what it is not. Sedevacantism is the belief that the Holy
See is vacant. If you believe that the
Catholic Church today has no pope —no true, valid and legitimate successor of
St Peter— you are a sedevacantist; otherwise, you’re not. I stress that sedevacantism is not a movement. There are sedevacantists who go only to the
Mass of sedevacantist priests; there are others who go elsewhere, and others
again who don’t go to Mass at all.
Likewise, of course, there are persons who go to the Mass of
sedevacantist priests without being themselves sedevacantists. So sedevacantism is not about who you
associate with, just as it is not about whether you think that women should
wear pants, or your view on chemtrails, or Archbishop Thuc’s dental state— it
is about whether or not you recognise John-Paul II as visible head of
Christ’s Church. And since it is a belief, not a movement,
sedevacantism does not as such have any goals or exercise any proper
activity. If you have come here today
in the hope of hearing us talk about the most effective way of restoring
Catholic order, or increasing the number of traditional Catholics, or getting
more subscribers to traditional reviews,
you’re going to be disappointed.
The scope of the two talks you are going to hear is not about whether
sedevacantism is useful. It is
limited to whether sedevacantism is true. And if it is true that John-Paul II
is not the Vicar of Christ, that truth is going to go on being obstinately
true whether we like it or not and quite irrespective of what we do about it.
A prominent Remnant writer recently said that sedevacantism is going
to kill the traditionalist movement.
That’s not true, but more importantly, it’s not relevant. Not if you love truth. There are many facts that are little known
and very inconvenient, but they don’t stop being facts. If you discover a tumorous lump in your
armpit, or you notice that your monthly expenditure is exceeding your income,
or there is a strange noise and odour coming from your car engine when you
drive…you don’t normally consider whether cancer, bankruptcy or a cracked
cylinder block are desirable or popular: you want to know the truth,
however inconvenient. And the truth
will be based on evidence. In the case
of Catholic truth, it will be based on what the Church tells us through her
teachings, her laws, her theologians, etc. The word sedevacantist is of course a
neologism – a word invented in the late 70s.
It is a convenient label just like the word traditionalist –
outsiders always make up convenient labels to identify groups, and these
labels often stick. What matters is
getting behind the label and understanding what it means. Here is a test: if you have correctly
understood what the word sedevacantist means, you will realise that
every time the pope dies, the entire Catholic world is sedevacantist. And if you’re not yet a
sedevacantist, then you’re a sede-occupantist. It’s one or the other. And of course sedevacantism has nothing to do
with rejecting the papacy. We accept all popes, but we don’t think Karol
Wojtyla is one. And we base that
conviction on the teaching and laws of the Catholic Church. Today you are going to hear two talks about
sedevacantism and each of them presents a different basic argument, because
there are two fundamentally different ways of proving that John-Paul II is
not pope. I want them to be clearly distinguished in your minds. [Editor: A greatly expanded version of the
other talk given by John Lane, is found on page 5, which continues from last
month.] Suppose someone offers you a solid gold ring,
but in fact it is a fake. There are
two possible ways of showing that it is a fake. The first is to show that it does not
possess some feature that gold must have – its specific gravity or its
reaction with nitric acid. The second
is to show that it is in fact something else, quite different from
gold and incompatible with being gold.
For instance, you pass a magnet over the item and it leaps up and
sticks to the magnet. You know at once
that you have iron, and therefore not solid gold. In looking at John-Paul, Mr Lane will be
arguing that he is a public heretic and that a public heretic cannot in any
circumstances be pope. He will pass
the magnet of heresy over Karol Wojtyla, and Karol Wojtyla will jump up and
stick to it, showing himself to be base, ferrous and prone to rust. I have nothing more to say about that
argument, which Mr Lane will present to you with great competence. My task is not to show that Karol Wojtyla is
a heretic. It is not even to enquire
at all into the cause of why he isn’t pope. It is simply to show that a true pope is
protected by the Holy Ghost from doing what KW does, and that KW therefore
cannot be pope. My doing so will also entail considerable
discussion of the religious body that Karol Wojtyla heads: the body that has
called itself the Conciliar Church.
I intend to show that this church also displays an essential incompatibility
with Catholicism – that it has officially and formally adopted doctrines,
morals, laws and ceremonies that the Catholic Church not only should
not, but also could not adopt. So let me put my argument in a nutshell. I say that the Church herself teaches us that
she is infallible and indefectible, not just in the teachings of her
extraordinary Magisterium, but also in her ordinary and universal
Magisterium; in her laws and in her liturgy and in the universal teaching
that she conveys to the faithful on a daily basis through every means by
which she manifests her faith. Nowhere in them can she teach errors opposed
even indirectly to divine revelation, nowhere in them can she contradict what
she has ever taught before, nowhere in them can she lead the faithful towards
error and sin or away from truth and holiness. And I further maintain that the Conciliar
Church does all of those things that the Catholic Church cannot in any
circumstances do. The Conciliar
liturgy, laws, ordinary unanimous daily teachings and practice are
incompatible with Catholic doctrine and are seducing countless souls towards
heresy or apostasy and eternal damnation. And in strict logical consequence, the
Conciliar Church is not the Catholic Church and its head is not the pope. Now there are several objections that you
might wish to make to an argument along these lines, but there is no doubt as
to what the commonest objection is from those who hold a position broadly
along the SSPX lines. It is the
objection that my claim exaggerates the scope of the Church’s infallibility
and indefectibility and describes as impossible things that are merely
undesirable and unusual, but not clearly contrary to any divine promise. That, I think, is the chief point at issue
between sedevacantist traditionalists and sede-occupantist
traditionalists. That’s why I am going
to quote a number of high authorities on this precise question. But before I do so, let’s recall the
historical background to the disagreement.
Throughout the 1960s and through into the beginning of the 1970s
occurred what came to be called “the changes in the Church”. The Mass evolved through a series of brief
stages into a vernacular, Protestant-type ceremony. The catechism either disappeared altogether
or was replaced by texts inculcating heresy.
All the other sacraments changed too.
So did vestments, the costume of priests and religious, the ceremonies
and traditions. All condemnations also
ceased - except of those who refused to adopt the changes. Joint worship with non-Catholics,
previously a mortal sin, became permissible and even desirable. Nations whose constitutions gave privileged
status to the Church founded by God, were constrained to alter their
constitutions, removing those privileges.
Certain doctrines disappeared, especially those concerning eternal
damnation and the necessity of belonging to the true Church. Inconvenient moral doctrines, if mentioned
at all, appeared always with a rider about the supposed higher rights of
conscience. And so much more. And nobody could possibly have understood the
nature of the crisis from the start.
One would be a fool to blame anyone for not having understood already
in 1968 that we were literally up against a new and false religion. But already in 1968 the new Eucharistic
prayers were in and the new rite of ordination, even before the so-called New
Order of Mass. The position in 1969 to 1970 was that many
priests and laity found it impossible in conscience to accept the Novus
Ordo, but the possibility that Paul VI might not be a true pope was not
yet even ventilated. In order to
explain and justify the rejection of apparently papal laws and teaching, the
emerging traditional movement developed the habit of stressing the limits of infallibility. It became fashionable to claim that only ex
cathedra teaching was infallible and that liturgies, encyclicals, etc.,
had no special protection or guarantee at all. Very understandable. But unfortunately…blatantly contrary to
Catholic doctrine, as we shall shortly see. And of course those who adopt that position
find themselves rapidly in a position which is not even self-consistent.
Hence we see sede-occupantist traditionalists protesting at the refusal of
Modernists to accept the doctrine of papal encyclicals, for instance condemning
contraception. But they themselves cheerfully reject or ignore the teaching
of the encyclicals of their post-Vatican II popes. So, we have ample grounds for reopening the
question. Let’s put aside habit and
prejudice and turn with an open mind to what the Church herself has taught
about her infallibility and indefectibility. How far does infallibility
stretch? Let’s start with the 1870
Vatican Council. We all know that this
council defined the infallibility of ex cathedra doctrinal
definitions. Did it say or suggest
that infallibility was limited exclusively to them? Far from it…
It clearly taught that Catholics must believe with divine faith
everything whatever the Church teaches to be divinely revealed, either
by a solemn judgment [extraordinary Magisterium] or by the ordinary
and universal Magisterium. (Dz 1792) The two are correlative. They command the same level of assent. They are equally infallible. So why did Vatican I concentrate on the
infallibility of the papal extraordinary Magisterium? Simply because it was the doctrine at that
time being called into question in some quarters – notably in France. The infallibility, of the Ordinary
Magisterium under certain conditions was a truth so well known to all
Catholics that it needed no more than a brief mention. The infallibility of the solemn papal
definition needed to be specially underlined. Today in the traditional movement, the
opposite seems to apply. You would
think that by defining the infallibility of the pope’s extraordinary Magisterium,
the Church had condemned to oblivion the dogma of the infallibility of her
ordinary and universal Magisterium. In fact this error was
creeping in well before Vatican II. (Must I Believe It? Canon Smith, Clergy
Review 1940s) “It is by no means uncommon to find the opinion,
if not expressed at least entertained, that no doctrine is to be regarded as
a dogma of faith unless it has been solemnly defined by an oecumenical
Council or by the Sovereign Pontiff himself.
This is by no means necessary.
It is sufficient that the Church teaches it by her ordinary Magisterium,
exercised through the Pastors of the faithful, the Bishops whose unanimous
teaching throughout the Catholic world, whether conveyed expressly through
pastoral letters, catechisms issued by episcopal authority, provincial
synods, or implicitly through prayers and religious practices allowed or
encouraged, or through the teaching of approved theologians, is no less
infallible than a solemn definition issued by a Pope or a general Council.” So now we know that it is infallible,
let’s take a closer look at what this ordinary Magisterium is. Some confusion has been caused among
Catholics trying to grapple with these concepts by the fact that, as they
know, every papal encyclical and every bishop’s pastoral letter and every
approved catechism and every prayer of the Missal or breviary and every law
in the Church’s Code of Canon Law reflects this ordinary teaching
authority of the Church. Yet obviously
they are not all infallible in themselves like ex cathedra
pronouncements. There is no mystery here. Take a comparison. Germs can cause disease, but it takes a lot
of germs all acting in the same place at the same time for the disease to
appear. The individual acts of the
ordinary Magisterium are not positively infallible like a doctrinal
definition. But by their weight and
number they coalesce into infallibility.
A one-off statement in a papal encyclical does not normally equal a
doctrinal definition. A doctrine
taught in the pastoral letters of a handful of bishops doesn’t equal a
general council. But when the
statements of popes and/or bishops and other sources that represent the
Church are so numerous and concordant that the faithful inevitably consider
this teaching as being the Church’s own — then we have a teaching
which truly has the same authority and commands the same assent as if it had
been taught by a solemn definition. When I say that the faithful consider this
teaching as being the Church’s own, I mean the great mass of the faithful
around the world – that’s why the word “universal” is used. It is the Ordinary and universal
Magisterium that is infallible. That’s
not something different from the ordinary Magisterium, it is the
ordinary Magisterium when its teaching on a given point has become universal. Right, I’ve made a strong claim here – the
time has come to see if I can justify what I’m saying by the voice of Catholic
authority. There are a great many books that cover the
different ways in which the Church teaches the faithful and the different
ways in which her teaching binds them, but the main guide I want to use in
this topic is one that very few of you will have heard of – and yet it has
the very highest authority. It’s
called De Valore Notarum Theologicarum – On the Meaning of
Theological Qualifications — by Fr Sixtus Cartechini. The special significance of this work is
that it was written for the use of the Roman Congregations in evaluating the
orthodoxy or heterodoxy of different doctrines. It was published at the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome in 1951.
It is based on the standard doctrines of the great theologians and of
the popes themselves on these topics, and it immediately became a standard
work and remained so until John XXIII decided that the era of condemning
false doctrines was at an end. I shall rely on Fr Cartechini very heavily,
because what he says is standard teaching.
Anyone who doubts what he says can check it in countless other
sources. The first three chapters of Fr Cartechini’s
work are about defined dogmas – extraordinary Magisterium. Chapter 4 is
called What the Ordinary Magisterium is and how dogmas can be proved from
it, or concerning divine and Catholic faith founded on the Ordinary
Magisterium. The title is already
eloquent – it tells us that dogmas, requiring the highest assent of faith,
can be proved from the Ordinary Magisterium as well as the extraordinary. Fr Cartechini explains that there are three
different ways in which the ordinary Magisterium can communicate to Catholics
what they must believe as of faith. First, he says, the ordinary Magisterium is exercised
through its express doctrine communicated by the pope or by the bishops to
the faithful throughout the whole world without the use of formal
definitions. And he gives a list of
doctrines concerning faith and morals infallibly taught by the ordinary
Magisterium as divinely revealed. Several of them are simply proposed in
papal encyclicals. Secondly, he says, the ordinary Magisterium is exercised by
the implicit teaching contained in the Church’s life or practice. He points out that the Church here follows
Christ Himself who also taught certain points by His acts, for instance the
duty to honour His Mother Mary. And
under this head he refers especially to the colossal doctrinal status of the
liturgy. “The liturgy does not create
dogmas, but it expresses dogmas because in her manner of praising God or
praying to Him the Church expresses what and how and according to what
concepts God wants to be publicly worshipped….[so] the Church cannot
permit that things should be said in the liturgy in her name that are
contrary to what she herself holds or believes.” (p.37) Cartechini also mentions the Church’s laws as
a source of infallible teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium
though the Church’s life and practice.
“…, neither general councils nor the pope can establish laws that
include sin…and nothing could be included in the Code of Canon Law
that is in any way opposed to the rules of faith or to evangelical holiness. Finally, there is the third way in which the Church
exercises her infallible ordinary Magisterium: through the tacit approval the
Church grants to the teaching of the fathers, the doctors and the
theologians. If a doctrine is diffused
throughout the whole Church, without objection, this means that the Church
tacitly approves that doctrine.
Otherwise the whole Church could and would inevitably err in faith. If you are used to the notion that the
Church’s teaching is only fully certain and obligatory when it takes the
shape of ex cathedra definitions, you will by now have realised that
you’ve been cheated. I think I’ve said enough to show that we’re on to
something. God has given His Church
greater assurances than many Catholics have realised. But the extent of the
theological fraud of which some of you may have been victims doesn’t stop
there. So far we have talked of the Church’s strictly
infallible teaching communicated to us either by the extraordinary
Magisterium or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. But there is also the Church’s teaching
that falls short of strict infallibility, yet is strictly and gravely
obligatory for every Catholic. Here we are looking, for example, at the bulk
of the doctrinal contents of encyclicals and the decrees of the Roman
Congregations. Concerning encyclicals, Pope Pius XII wrote
what follows in Humani Generis: “Neither
must it be thought that what is set forth in encyclical letters does not of
itself demand consent on the grounds that in writing such letters the
pontiffs do not exercise the supreme authority of their
Magisterium. For these things are
taught by the ordinary Magisterium, concerning which the words ‘He that hears
you hears me’ are also applicable… The
greater part of what is proposed and set forth in encyclicals already belongs
to Catholic doctrine on other grounds.
But if the sovereign pontiffs should pronounce an express judgment in
their official documents upon a matter previously subject to dispute it is
plain to all that according to the mind and intention of the same pontiffs
this point cannot be any longer considered a matter of free dispute among
theologians.” (Dz 2313) This
is quite clear. The teaching of
encyclicals is obligatory, even if it didn’t previously belong to the body of
Church teaching. And the duty to
believe it doesn’t derive from the duty of faith. It comes from the duty of obedience, just
like the child’s duty to believe his parents.
Here for instance is Canon
George Smith again, writing in the 1940s in an article in the Clergy
Review expressly addressing what Catholics have to believe. “…that much of the
authoritative teaching of the Church, whether in the form of Papal
encyclicals, decisions, condemnations, replies from Roman Congregations -
such as the Holy office - or from the Biblical Commission, is not an exercise
of the infallible Magisterium.
And here once again our cautious believer raises his voice: “Must I
believe it?” The answer is
implicit in the principles already established. We have seen that the source of the
obligation to believe is not the infallibility of the Church but her
divine commission to teach. Therefore,
whether her teaching is guaranteed by infallibility or not, the Church is
always the divinely appointed teacher and guardian of revealed truth, and
consequently the supreme authority of the Church, even when it does not intervene
to make an infallible and definitive decision on matters of faith or morals,
has the right, in virtue of the divine commission, to command the obedient
assent of the faithful. In the absence
of infallibility the assent thus demanded cannot be that of faith, whether
Catholic or ecclesiastical; it will be an assent of a lower order,
proportioned to its ground or motive.
But whatever name be given to it —for the present we may call it belief—
it is obligatory; obligatory not because the teaching is infallible —it is
not — but because it is the teaching of the divinely appointed Church. It is the duty of the Church, as Franzelin
has pointed out, not only to teach revealed doctrine but also to protect
it, and therefore the Holy See “may prescribe as to be followed or proscribe
as to be avoided theological opinions or opinions connected with theology,
not only with the intention of infallibly deciding the truth by a definitive
pronouncement, but also — without any such intention — merely for the purpose
of safeguarding the security of Catholic doctrine.” If it is the duty of the Church, even
though non-infallibly, to “prescribe or proscribe” doctrines to this end,
then it is evidently also the duty of the faithful to accept them or reject
them accordingly. Nor is this obligation of
submission to the non-infallible utterances of authority satisfied by the
so-called silentium obsequiosum.
The security of Catholic doctrine, which is the purpose of these
decisions, would not be safeguarded if the faithful were free to withhold
their assent. It is not enough that
they should listen in respectful silence, refraining from open
opposition. They are bound in
conscience to submit to them,* and conscientious submission to a doctrinal
decree does not mean only to abstain from publicly rejecting it; it means the
submission of one’s own judgment to the more competent judgment of authority. But, as we have already
remarked, ad impossibile nemo tenetur, and without an intellectual
motive of some sort no intellectual assent, however obligatory, is
possible. On what intellectual ground,
therefore, do the faithful base the assent which they are obliged to render
to these non-infallible decisions of authority? On what Cardinal Franzelin* somewhat
cumbrously but accurately describes as auctoritas universalis providentiae
ecclesiasticae. The faithful
rightly consider that, even where there is no exercise of the infallible Magisterium,
divine Providence has a special care for the Church of Christ; that therefore
the Sovereign Pontiff in view of his sacred office is endowed by God with the
graces necessary for the proper fulfilment of it; that therefore his
doctrinal utterances, even when not guaranteed by infallibility, enjoy the
highest competence; that in a proportionate degree this is true also of the
Roman Congregations and of the Biblical Commission, composed of men of great
learning and experience, who are fully alive to the needs and doctrinal
tendencies of the day, and who, in view of the care and the (proverbial)
caution with which they carry out the duties committed to them by the
Sovereign Pontiff, inspire full confidence in the wisdom and prudence of
their decisions. Based as it is upon
these consideration of a religious order, the assent in question is called a
“religious assent.” [Possiblity of error. The error could not be a heresy. The theory that an encyclical may possibly
contain an inaccurate statement – because not infallible in itself in all
respects – is held by a few, but it is far from suggesting that an encyclical
may teach previously condemned doctrine, may lead souls astray. And it is far from suggesting that such
erroneous doctrine in encyclicals might become so habitual that far from
submitting to encyclical doctrines, Catholics would have to read them with
their theology manuals open on their laps to see whether by some lucky stroke
their teaching might be orthodox…] I’ve
quoted Smith for ease as he wrote in English.
If you read Latin, I refer you especially on this topic to Cartechini
and to Cardinal Franzelin’s De Divine Scriptura et Traditione which is
considered the most detailed and respected theological analysis on the
topic. He’s
saying that… And
indeed the obligation of assent to the decrees even of Roman Congregations
has already been frequently insisted on by the popes. For instance, under Pope St Pius X it was
ruled that failure to submit to the teaching of the Biblical Commission
involved grave guilt of disobedience in respect of its authority and of
temerity in respect of sound doctrine.
(Dz 2113) Cartechini tells us
that the doctrinal decrees of the Roman Congregations, when promulgated on
special papal authority constitute a binding doctrinal precept (p 117), but
that even when they are not specifically promulgated on the authority of the
Pope, but only by the general authority already delegated to the
Congregations, they still call for obedience under pain of grave sin. (118)
And Pope Pius IX ruled in Tuas Libenter (1863 to the archbishop
of Munich), that it was by no means enough for Catholic writers and scholars
to accept the Church’s dogmas “But they must also submit to the decisions –
he said – pertaining to doctrine that are set forth by the pontifical
congregations, and to those points of doctrine that are held by the common
and constant consent of Catholics to be theological truths so certain that
even if opinions contrary to them cannot be called heretical, they yet merit
some other theological censure.” (Dz 1684) FOOTNOTES *
Letter of Pius IX to the Archbishop of Munich, 1861; cf. Denzinger, 1684. * Loc.cit. ˜™ So let’s recap a
little. I have shown that true doctrinal infallibility
extends far beyond the limits of solemn definitions. I hope I have outlined the ways in which
the Ordinary Magisterium can teach infallibly, such as by laws, liturgy and
the common teaching of theologians. I
have also shown that our duty of submission to the teaching of the Church’s
authorities extends further even than the infallibility of the Ordinary
Magisterium. I hope above all that
I have re-inspired you with an attitude that is in very short supply in our
days. It’s called trust in the Church.
I think I’ve said enough to show that our mother the Holy Catholic Church is
truly “the pillar and ground of truth” and truly, as the prophet Isaias
foresaw, “35:8. And a path and a way shall be there, and it shall be called
the holy way: the unclean shall not pass over it, and this shall be unto you a
straight way, so that fools shall not err therein.” I have it very much
at heart to spread trust in the Church.
We mortals are so wanting in trust where it’s merited – and so keen to
trust self – where our trust is seldom merited. We act as if Christ had never
made His promises. Our spiritual life
makes no progress, because we don’t trust God enough. And our Catholicity is weak and etiolated,
leaving us vulnerable to confusion in crisis, to compromise and to the
distortion of sound doctrine, because we won’t trust God’s Church as
God wants her to be trusted. Here is Dom Guéranger : (Guéranger : Le Sens Chrétien de l’Histoire,
Paris, 1945, p. 21-22) “What gives ever greater firmness and calm to
the Christian historian’s perspective is the assurance given him by the
Church, marching without cease before him like a luminous pillar shedding
light upon all his appreciations. He
knows how tightly the Church is united with the God-man and how she is
guaranteed by His promise against all error in her teaching and in her
overall guidance of Christian society; he knows how the Holy Ghost inspires
and guides her; so it is in her that he seeks the rule of his judgments. … he knows in what the Church’s direction
and spirit and her divine instinct are manifested. He receives and accepts them; he confesses
them with courage; he applies them ...
And never does he betray, never does he flinch: what the Church judges
good he calls good and evil what she judges evil. The sarcastic clamouring of
short-sighted cowards matters not to him.
He knows he is right because he is with the Church and the Church is
with Christ.” But of course,
you can’t take that attitude to the Conciliar Church, can you? If you know and believe the unchanging
Catholic Faith, you cannot possibly believe all that the Conciliar religion
teaches in the decrees of Vatican II, in its encyclicals, in the common
teaching of its bishops, in its officially approved and used liturgical
texts, in its laws and disciplinary norms.
Much less can you have Dom Guéranger’s attitude towards the Church
that has emerged from Vatican II, holding her hand like a child, hanging on
her every word, loving her, admiring her, eager to learn from her at all
times – trusting her. I say you can’t. And the time has come to illustrate and
prove that claim. I’ve spent a lot of
time on the doctrinal background to be sure we have our criteria of judgment
straight. I hope now to be briefer. I have to show that
the Church that has emerged from Vatican II clearly does not enjoy the divine
guarantees respecting her ordinary Magisterium and associated acts that the
Catholic Church necessarily and inalienably possesses. One could spend years on the examples
available – I shall just choose a few, but enough. As my first example,
I choose the liturgy of the Conciliar Church.
I choose the liturgy first because it’s crucial. In Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI made a
very remarkable statement. He said
that “people are instructed in the truths of faith…far more effectually by
the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official
pronouncement of the teaching of the Church.”
In other words, when it comes to communicating the faith to the
faithful, on a practical level, the liturgy is more important and
influential than any other way in which the Church communicates her
mind. And we know that’s true by experience. You have only to think. It was not Vatican
II itself that undermined the faith of the bulk of the laity, because they
never read Vatican II. It was
the New Mass that really ruined them – wasn’t it? We’ve mentioned
liturgy as guaranteed by the infallible ordinary Magisterium. Cartechini
said : “the Church cannot permit that things should be said in
the liturgy in her name that are contrary to what she herself holds or
believes.” (p.37) Pope Pius VI condemned
the Jansenist synod of Pistoia for suggesting that the “existing liturgical
order received and approved by the Church might be in any part due to
forgetfulness of the principles that ought to guide her” – he taught that this idea was impossible because “the
Church, guided by the Spirit of God, cannot establish a discipline …that is
dangerous or harmful”. Dz 1533 and
1578. You see at once that
these quotes – and there are many more available – rule out at once the
common escape routes. You can’t escape
by saying that the New Mass is not fully obligatory or doesn’t apply to the
whole Church. If the Conciliar Church
is the Catholic Church then the New Mass is undoubtedly the largest part of
“the existing liturgical order received and approved by the Church” and
therefore protected by the Holy Ghost from being unorthodox or harmful. Strictly speaking, you can’t even take the
popular evasion of Michael Davies and the Indulterers by insisting that it is
only the Latin that counts. Because
the Conciliar Church authorities have consciously approved the vernacular
mistranslations – most notably the mistranslation found in every language in
the world whereby the words “shall be shed for you and for many” in the
consecration of the chalice are rendered “for you and for all”. That heretical mistranslation is now part
of the existing liturgical order received and approved by the Church –
isn’t it? The only question is…by which
Church? But suppose we take
the Latin texts anyway. I’ll take just
one simple example. It occurs in the
Good Friday prayer for the Jews when Novus Ordo ministers pray not for the
conversion of the Jews, but rather that they may continue or progress
in faithfulness to God’s covenant. “in sui fœderis fidelitate proficere”. That can only mean that the Jews are at
present faithful to God’s covenant.
But of course they utterly abandoned the old Covenant by refusing to
accept the Messias, by crying “We have no king but Caesar…We will not have
this man to reign over us.” And
thereupon the Old Covenant was abrogated and replaced by the new and
perpetual one between God and His Church, with which the perfidious Jews have
no connection whatever. There you have
clear heresy taught in the Conciliar liturgy, and in fact an actual promotion
of Judaism. Beyond that, I
rapidly note the following points about the Conciliar Liturgy, all of them
offensive to Catholic doctrine and harmful to souls: ·
The
translated consecration formula substantially changes Christ’s words and is
invalid according to St. Thomas, rubrics, Council of Florence (Dz 715) and
the Fathers. ·
Absence
of true offertory – essential – Jewish grace before meals. ·
Consecration
ordered to be read as narrative not in persona Christi. ·
The
approbation given at the very least to “Mass” facing the people, to communion
in the hand, to extraordinary ministers, to the suppression of al that
inspires reverence – changes calculated to destroy faith in the real
presence, in the sacrificial nature of the Mass, in the necessity of an
ordained sacrificing priesthood. ·
The
total absence from the new rite and the new catechism of the word or doctrine
that the Mass is propitiatory. ·
I
also draw attention to Fr Cekada’s very valuable and lucid booklet called The
Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass. It’s an analysis of the propers of the New
Mass and how they were created from the traditional propers. It proves beyond cavil that the new propers
were established on the strict principle of suppressing or replacing every
mention of miracles, divine wrath, the danger of losing one’s soul,
temptations, concupiscence, guilt, detachment from the world, the existence
of enemies of Holy Church or of our souls and much more. All wiped out. I remind you that the
Church cannot lead souls into error or danger through approved liturgy. Here’s how St Augustine puts it: “The
Church of God, surrounded by so much chaff and darnel, tolerates many things,
but she neither approves nor does what is contrary to faith or
virtue and she does not remain silent in the face of these things.” The indefensible new
so-called Mass, so derogatory to the divine honour, so harmful to souls and
so corrosive of sound doctrine, is therefore my first clear instance that the
Conciliar Church cannot be the Catholic Church. Secondly, there are
the Church’s laws. Remember Cartechini
summarising the unanimous teaching of the theologians? “Neither general councils nor the pope can
pass laws which include sin…Nothing can be found in the CIC that is in any
way opposed to the rules of faith or of evangelical holiness.” Now if we consult the
laws of the Conciliar Church we find a number which do include sin, are
opposed in many ways to the rules of faith and which frankly trample
underfoot the very concept of evangelical holiness. Here are a few
examples that occur to me. 1. The authorisation to administer the
sacraments to non-Catholics. [Showing the pamphlet] In the Old Code – Canon 731 [It is forbidden to
administer the sacraments of the Church to heretics and schismatics, even if
they err in good faith and ask for them, unless they have first recanted
their errors and been reconciled with the Church.] In the New Code, Canon
844/3+4, it’s now permitted for all the eastern heretics and schismatics and
many other non-Catholics too.] 2. The authorisation of active public worship
in common with non-Catholics and participation in their rites. Old Code Canon 1258 - I won’t bother reading it – it’s in the
catechism. Now we have V2 with its
decree Unitatis Redintegratio saying that it can now be a good idea to
break the first commandment in this way.844\2 etc. For 2000 years the
Church has taught emphatically that both of these two acts are mortally
sinful. And in both cases her doctrine
is as evangelically holy as you may wish for: Give not that which is holy unto dogs, cast
not your pearls before swine, if they will not hear the Church, let them be
to you as the heathen and the publican. 3. The definition of
matrimony in Canon 1055 which follows the V2 decree on the Church in the
Modern World by equating the various ends of marriage, in conflict with the
traditional teaching of the Church summarised in the 1917 Code which said
succinctly that “the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education
of children” (Canon 1013). In fact the
new Code actually lists the good of the spouses before the primary end
and only mentions the procreation of children afterwards. This is the error that was vehemently
opposed at V2 by Cardinal Ottaviani and by Cardinal Browne the
superior-general of the Dominicans. The suppression from
the new Code of the divine law promulgated by St Paul according to which
women must have their heads covered and men their heads uncovered in
church. Or did St Paul need lessons in
evangelical holiness from those who drafted the 1983 Code of Canon Law? So we see that the
Conciliar Church by its laws authorises and encourages deadly sin and the
heresy that the true Church is something other than, bigger than, the
Catholic Church. The Catholic Church cannot
do this. Now look at Vatican
II itself. Traditionalists have
emphasised that it did not purport to be exercising the extraordinary
Magisterium, and have concluded that it is therefore acceptable to suppose
that it erred. Hold on. When the decrees of a general council are
not making solemn dogmatic definitions, they remain one of the very highest
exercises of the ordinary and universal Magisterium. To say that we don’t automatically have to
accept by divine faith all that they say is not the same as to suggest that
they can teach errors against Catholic doctrine that have previously been
infallibly condemned. At the very
least such a council’s teaching is infallibly safe and obligatory in
conscience. Yet in the texts of
Vatican II we find numerous heresies and other false doctrines. I haven’t the time to
list many, but we must mention religious liberty to which an entire
declaration was devoted and which contradicts all but word for word the
teaching of Pope Pius IX’s Quanta Cura which is commonly held to have
been a classic example of a solemn definition by the infallible extraordinary
Magisterium. I can’t mention this
topic without some allusion to the ingenious efforts of Dr Brian Harrison to
show that the V2 doctrine is in fact compatible with the infallible teaching
that it appears to contradict. I would
point out that to the best of my knowledge Fr Harrison is the first man in
the history of Christianity to have found it necessary to write a very long
and scholarly book claiming to demonstrate that despite admitted appearances,
the teaching of a given general council can in fact – by mighty effort – be
interpreted in a way that may be just about compatible with Catholic
doctrine! It would be churlish
not to admire Dr Harrison’s endeavours.
They smack to me of true heroism.
And they start from the sound principle that Harrison knows as
well as I do that without such a reconciliation the Conciliar Church
collapses to the ground in rubble and ruin. But it was a hopeless
task from the start. That such a work
should have been considered necessary was already proof that Vatican II was
not really a general council of the Catholic Church. Harrison stretches the old pre-Vatican II
teachings as far as he can in a liberal direction and he stretches the
Vatican II doctrine as far as he can in the direction of Catholicism and he
convinces himself that he has made the two ends meet. He hasn’t. He hasn’t because in both
cases his interpretation is unique to himself. And in both cases, everyone else has
understood and supposed the opposite. Up to Vatican II, for instance, the
popes insisted emphatically on the duty of nations to profess the true faith
and they sharply rebuked any once Catholic nation that failed to do so. Since
Vatican II, however, the new « popes » have throughout the world
insisted that every once Catholic nation should remove from its constitution
every sign of privileged status for the true Faith. And they have stripped the Church’s liturgy
of every allusion (and there were many) to the dogma that Christ must reign
not only over the souls of individuals but also over states and
institutions. Are we really to
believe that all this only concerned a matter of political expediency ? Or that political circumstances in every
nation altered so radically between 1958 and 1963 that what was once a grave duty
became overnight a grave sin ? Are we really to
believe that Pius IX had mistaken the true meaning and application of Quanta
Cura and needed Dr Harrison to explain it to him? And that John Paul II has mistaken the true
meaning of Vatican II and needed Harrison to explain it to him? And if John-Paul does accept the
Harrison version of religious liberty rather than the John Courtney Murray
heresies, when is he going to show some sign of it? Another plain error
in the law of the Conciliar Church is found in her annulment régime. The US if the annulment capital of the
world, of course. Over a half of
Catholic marriages end up being decreed by the Conciliar Church never to have
existed, to have been null and void from the start. In other words, the couple weren’t
married. They were living in
fornication. Their children are
bastards. Now either the Conciliar
Church is concurring wholesale in adultery by annulling marriages without
sufficient reason, putting asunder what God has joined together. Or else the Conciliar Church doesn’t know
how to marry people validly in the first place and is concurring in wholesale
fornication by telling people that they are married when they’re not. Either
way, the message is loud and clear.
Those who learn from the laws and practice of the Conciliar Church are
concluding that sacramental marriage is not a permanent state lasting until
death. That’s a heresy. A final example. We have learnt that the Church teaches though
her ordinary infallible Magisterium, not only by what she says, but by what
she does not say. Silence gives
consent – certainly when the Church over 40 years fails to protest at a
notorious and widespread, even universal error or evil. Now among many others, just look at the
rather important truth of eternal damnation.
By a single mortal sin we lose the divine life and are necessarily
destined to Hell unless we repent. Our
Lord Jesus Christ taught this truth some forty times in the Gospels. There is almost nothing more central in
Catholicism. After the praise of God,
the Church’s chief task is to save souls.
Save them from what ?
Without the danger of Hellfire the redemption has no meaning –
Christianity become pointless. Now look at the
deafening silence of the Conciliar Church on Hell. Look at its silence on mortal sin. Ask a Conciliar priest when he last
preached on Hell. Ask John-Paul II why
he devotes his encyclicals to hundreds of texts intended to create the notion
that the incarnation creates a permanent and unbreakable bond between Christ
and every man, inviting the notion of universal salvation, and never warns
his flock of the danger of damnation.
The fact is clear. By its
silence the Conciliar Church denies Hell, at least as a real danger
threatening its members. Reverend Fathers,
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you’ve followed me so far, you’ll have seen that the
Conciliar Church teaches false doctrine to its faithful in ways that the
Catholic Church is divinely guaranteed from doing. The Conciliar Church is therefore not
the Catholic Church. Please recall
that this argument in no way depends on the question of pertinacity — the
question of whether those who teach the errors individually realise or not
that their errors are contrary to Catholic doctrine. Christ has promised to protect His Church
from leading the faithful into error or into danger to their souls, whether
deliberately or by accident.
Likewise, my case in no way depends on the fine distinctions that
sometimes apply between the exact theological qualification of a given
doctrine. Some of what the Church
teaches infallibly is to be believed with ecclesiastical faith, not divine
faith. To deny it is a grave sin
entailing excommunication, but it is probably not strictly heresy. That sort of distinction has no place
here. The Church herself cannot teach
souls any error, opposed in any way to the teaching that she has already
given them – quite irrespective of the exact theological qualification that
belongs to the doctrine involved. The
Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3;15 Douay-Rheims footnote - 3:15. But if I
tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the
house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of
the truth. The pillar and ground of
the truth.... Therefore the church of the living God can never uphold error,
nor bring in corruptions, superstition, or idolatry.) The reason why the
Conciliar Church is not the Catholic Church is quite simple. If you publicly profess heresy, you case by
that very fact to be a Catholic. JP2
and his bishops have done so. You’ll
hear more about that from Mr Lane. I’d like to close by
returning to the dispositions good Catholics are supposed to have
towards the Church. I want to quote a
few words from the immortal Fr Faber’s THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. We must be loyal to the Church in our least thoughts
of it. We must like its ways, as well as obey its precepts
and believe its doctrines. We must esteem all that the Church blesses, all that
the Church affects. Our attitude must be always one of submission, not
of criticism. He, who is disappointed
with the Church, must be losing his faith, even though he does not know it. A man’s love of the Church is the surest test of his
love of God. He knows that the whole
Church is informed with the Holy Ghost.
The divine life of the Paraclete, His counsels, His inspirations, His
workings, His sympathies, His attractions, are in it everywhere. The gift of infallibility is but a concentration,
the culminating point, the solemn official out-speaking, of the indwelling of
the Holy Ghost in the Church. While it
calls, like revelation, for absolute submission of heart and soul, all the
minor arrangements and ways and dispositions of the Church call for general
submission, docility, and reverence, because of the whole Church being a
shrine fulfilled with the life of the Holy Ghost. —Fr. F. W. Faber Cong. Orat. D.D., Burns and Oates, 4th ed.
pp. 187-9 I suggest that no
traditional Catholic can take that view of John Paul II and the religion he
heads. The reason lies in a fact
stated by a foreign cardinal in the US for the 41st Eucharistic
Congress held in 1969 in Philadelphia.
He said “We are now standing in
the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone
through…We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the
anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. The confrontation lies within the plans of
divine providence.” His name was Karol
Cardinal Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow.
It’s nice to find we agree about something. I rest my case. “When one loves the
pope one does not stop to debate about what he advises or demands, to ask how
far the rigorous duty of obedience extends and to mark the limit of this
obligation. When one loves the pope,
one does not object that he has not spoken clearly enough, as if he were
obliged to repeat into the ear of each individual his will, so often clearly
expressed, not only viva voce, but also by letters and other public
documents; one does not call his orders into doubt on the pretext – easily
advanced by whoever does not wish to obey - that they emanate not directly
from him, but from his entourage; one does not limit the field in which he
can and should exercise his will; one does not oppose to the authority of the
pope that of other persons, however learned, who differ in opinion from the
pope. Besides, however great their knowledge,
their holiness is wanting, for there can be no holiness where there is
disagreement with the pope.” —St Pius X, to
the priests of the Apostolic Union, 18th November 1912, AAS 1912, p. 695. ˜™
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