The #### above was, strangely, inserted in place of the Latin term for "filled see"; i.e., the See of Rome is, in fact, occupied by Benedict XVI.

No one demands or expects that all popes be saints.

Catholics were well accustomed to having unsainted and maybe just unsaintly popes for centuries. There was not a one between Pius V and Pius X.

It's just a red herring wrapped in a straw man to be suggesting that the problem with THOSE people (Those Who May Not Be Named And Who Appear as %4&*$#@! or What Have You If One Tries To Name Them) is that they expect  Roman Pontiffs to be SAINTS. We all know that that's not it. Not it at all. We should all stop insulting the intelligenge of our neighbor by waving about that stinky old red herring decade after decade. It's an untruthful argument. Pope Leo X was far from being a saint, but in the end he did just fine denouncing the errors of Luther.

Those Who May Not Be Named do not expect popes to be SAINTS. They expect popes to be CATHOLICS. They expect them not to be everything Archbishop Lefebvre said they were: Antichrists who have uncrrowned Christ and embraced the Godless Revolution, and OFFICIALLY promoted grave offenses againt the First Commandment, who may not be true popes at all.

Now I ask you. Is that really expecting too much?

And even when a pope does not speak infallibly, when he speaks as a teacher of the faithful ("Assisi is the way that the Church must follow") the faithful are bound to listen to him as though it were Christ speaking. It is a little known and highly embarrassing oddity of common theological opinion that the theoretically fallible utterances of popes are nonetheless "covered" by the Assurance of Christ, "He who hears you, hears Me..."

One could be saucy. One could say that in the Catholic System things always look much better for Bellarmine and Billot than they do for Saint Bernadette and her washerwoman mother and, to quote Francisco of Fatima, poor, poor Jesus.

But things are tough ALL over.

Gladius, you may want to take a second look at things you have written recently about the teachings of Pope Pius XII, whom, I assume, you still consider a true Vicar of Christ. Yes, you were diffident and tentative about appearing to side with someone who was neither and simply dismissed "Pacelli" as a hapless shill for resurgent Modernism, one who was doomed to be such from birth. But even so. We should try to keep our theological noses very clean. If we don't, one day we won't be able to look down them at those who Resist but Recognize.

GV never called Pope Pius XII "a shill for Modernism."

I was referrng to a thread in which a book by one Mary Martinez was being respectfully cited. I think that it is a fair epitome of her words on "Pacelli" to say that she dismisses him as "a hapless shill for Modernism, doomed to be so from birth."

I don't think that Pope Benedict XIII was alone in being "of questionable quality" in the long period between the death of Pope Pius V and the election of Pope Pius X. There was nepotism and destructive favoritism galore with more than a few of these unsainted Vicars of Christ. But their incompetence and sloth negatively affected only the running of the Vatican. The Kingdom of Heaven kept running A-OK.

When I say "maybe they were just unsaintly" I am seeking a reason as to why they were unsainted.

Innocent XI made it to Blessed, one must point out.

The issue under discussion here is alleged fault in the TEACHING of Pope Pius XII  which the faithful were (and are) bound to hear as being spoken by Christ. (I use the word fault and not error advisedly.)

I'm not blaming anyone for trying to thrash out the problem with that most problematic of popes: I'm just pointing out that the problem with him is with him as a TEACHER OF THE FAITHFUL, not just as a behind-the-scenes ecclesiastical player, in which capacity everyone from Leo XIII to Pius XII, everyone except Pius X, has been faulted by learned and pious Traditional Catholics. I've also suggested that Pope Pius XII has gotten a totally bum rap over his Mystical Body encyclical from Catholic authors with questionable sociopolitical views.

The real problems lie elsewhere. And they should be handled with the utmost delicacy. Claiming that "Pacelli" was theologically perverted beyond all hope of redemption from the time he was a little boy and that that explains his future career as an enemy of Christ is not exactly delicate.

The #### above was, strangely, inserted in place of the Latin term for "filled see"; i.e., the See of Rome is, in fact, occupied by Benedict XVI.

I think that word got added to the "censored words list" back in the days of Dust-7, when he used it as an epithet against SSPX-followers. On the one hand, it's a technical term. On the other hand, it almost can't be used in a good sense, as the default position for a Catholic is s*deplenist.

It's like calling someone a meat-eater. I think every human being, by default, is willing to eat some kind of insect/fish/fowl/mammal meat -- unless they are distinguished by their complete abstinence from it, e.g., vegetarians, vegans, etc.

Matthew

Dulcamera--I am a bit slow at times. Could you tell us clearly whether you accept the v2 'council' as legitimate and if you accept the 'popes' beg with john 23 as real? Just asking

Acc to Fr. Cuthbert Butler's book on the Vatican Council(the 1st and only Vatican Council), no infallible declaration has come from the Vatican since the dogmatic constitution issued by that same Council.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.HTM#4 and #6

that a man CANNOT take the purported Roman Pontiff as a rule of faith, or the practice thereof.  Is this not a frightening fact?

Not at all. God is more powerful than the pope, and His religion cannot be corrupted. Under proper obedience, corruption or evil in any man, even the pope, is powerless against the incorruptible faith.

If the church and the true faith depended upon the virtue of the men who hold it's offices to exist and survive, there would (humanly speaking) surely be no church today. But because it is a divinely instituted thing, no amount of human corruption, even of it's authorities, can possibly corrupt, alter or kill it. The faith is not given the popes to change, but to transmit. The Catholic is therefore correct who recognizes BOTH... the divine grace and life of the true faith and it's incorruptible nature, AND the fallibility of every man (even the pope when he is not willfully exercising his infallibility).

The Catholic of a balanced and prudent mind will not be at all shocked (or at least not much) if the pope sins, or sins grievously. They know the pope sins. He's human. They know also not to follow him into sin. Such a Catholic has the privilege of being founded upon a rock, not tossed to and fro with the waves of confusion and uncertainty. He will follow the pope where the pope is right and where it is all right to follow him, and disobey him (in obedience to God) where the pope is wrong and it would be wrong to follow him. He needn't deny the office of the man because the man might be bad. (He would never dare judge the man, as only God can do.) The Catholic who has not neglected his own moral and theological education knows his faith well enough to know what it IS, and what it is NOT. He has good sense enough (by the help of God) to keep his own bearings regardless of what the Pope as man is, and the humility to obey when the man is right.

The king, even if bad, is still the king. The martyrs who died under the roman emperors, I'm sure, never once denied that the emperors were the emperors simply because they were pagan and wicked. Instead, they acknowledged by laying down their lives that his authority came from God, and that the office was what it was, regardless of the rottenness of the man in it. So, too, the sensible Catholic knows the pope is the pope, for better or for worse, and will for the love of God obey him when he is right, and in anything he can morally do so, and for the love of God again, disobey where he must, even as the martyrs obeyed the emperors in dying, but NOT in offering sacrifice to false gods. We can obey the pope in anything not contrary to God, even if we can't follow this new religion. He still carries the authority of God as pope, however good or bad he is as a man.

The Catholic of a balanced and prudent mind will not be at all shocked (or at least not much) if the pope sins, or sins grievously. They know the pope sins. He's human.

Thank you for the profound insight, verbatim SSPX-isms and all.

Anyone with a brain would also see it thus.  The vulgar way of putting it would be...NO SH*T!

While your ability to repeat the SSPX party line is most impressive and entertaining, sort of like sitting in a room with a well-trained parakeet, it is plain that you do not intend to think seriously before giving a substantial answer to the matter at hand.  Good day.

Matthew,

You have surely seen this thread.  What say you?