Author Topic: Abp. Lefebvre openly doubts Paul VI's claim to the papacy... (Read 6057 times)

dust-7 · « **Reply #1 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:06:14 PM »

(Unfounded Sedevacantist speculation deleted)

cathman7 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:16:59 PM »

**Edited (I should not have posted this transcript)

Cletus · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:36:26 PM »

Back and forth, back and forth.

But it should be pointed out that the "forth" seems incoherent and off-the-cuff and vaguely hysterical. ("No more, no more.. ???") Along the lines of His Lordship's whimsical claim that God would have made an Atom Bomb fall on St Peter's Basilica or "what have you" if the pope had tried to propose as being de fide anything that was heretical.

There was a sedevacantist-leaning "back" a few years later after the first Assisi abomination. His Lordship said that a time might come when the See of Peter would have to be declared vacant. No need to dig up the exact quote. We all know that he said it. It's common knowledge. What I admit to not knowing is if the clock stopped at a tick or a tock.

By the way, from where do those THREE exclamation points come? From a text prepared by His Lordship? That seems doubtful to me. The whole extract seems dubious. Too many suspension dots.

cathman7 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:42:58 PM »

I still think the strongest argument against sedevacantism is that it must (at least according to my understanding) resort to extraordinary means to explain how the Papacy will be restored and in some cases there is this belief that there will not be a Pope again since we are living in the end times.

**Edited

It is not a dubious quote but was made by a long-time supporter of sedevacantism who used to follow Fr. Sanborn. I retract the previous quote from Archbishop Lefebvre since it is from a transcription made of a conference he gave in 1983. Sorry about that.

Trinity · « **Reply #5 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:49:14 PM »

Originally the pope came out of the sea.

cathman7 · « **Reply #6 on:** July 16, 2007, 08:50:52 PM »

Again....I should not have posted that quote because this is precisely what I feared would happen.

Cletus · « **Reply #7 on:** July 16, 2007, 09:01:54 PM »

The purpose of quoting Archbishop Lefebvre's favorable statements on sedevacantism is to show that the raging fury that so many Traditionalists have, or strategically pretend to have, against sedevacantists is arbitrary and irrational. As is their acting as though proposing that there is no pope is on a par with some sort of unspeakable blasphemy against the Holy Virgin.

Archbishop Lefebvre publicly flirted with the idea of sedevacantism. He thereby promoted it. "The time may come... I am not sure that it has come yet... But it may be a 'coming." He was the one who opened up that avenue to masses of Catholics who never would have heard of Father Noel Barbara or Mr William Strojie. That is the way it was for me: I found His Lordship's hotter comments about the antichrists in apostate Rome more convincing than what he said when he simmered down and became more prudent.

Traditionalists who uphold him as great hero of Tradition and abominate sedevacantists as lower than the muck in the lowest pits of Hell (and this is the general drift of on-line Traditionalist commentary on sedevacantists) should at least admit that it was their great hero of Tradition who put the sedevacantist bee in Catholic bonnets on a worldwide scale. Were they to do so, their high dudgeon would come down a few notches, and they would become less troublesome to sedevacantists on a personal level.

Pointing out His Lordship's chronic state of inconsistency also might be a tactful way to indicate to his admirers and the adherents of his Society that they come by their own chronic inconsistency honestly.

cathman7 · « **Reply #8 on:** July 16, 2007, 09:07:27 PM »

Point well taken. Also be well aware of the personal gripe that many sedevacantists have with supporters of the SSPX.

Cletus · « **Reply #9 on:** July 16, 2007, 09:25:08 PM »

Looks like we're all tripping over one another tonight. I edited my post to reflect an edit by someone else to his post, and added something that might NOT be well taken by the subsequent poster.

My own policy is never to change anything but a misspelling if someone already has responded to one of my posts. I probably shouldn't even do that. There is so much room for abuse in this area. Someone could go back and tone down a vitriolic post and make someone who expressed dismay about it seem like a little old lady. I guess that's why the "quote" option is important.

In any case, "point well taken" does not refer to my previous post as it now stands. But the change was slight.

Trinity · « **Reply #10 on:** July 16, 2007, 09:34:19 PM »

Obscurus, if you are referring to what I said, I found it amusing. Lighten up. The day that God can't appoint a shepherd from any point of the compass will be the day. To quote St. Margaret, "Let us have a little faith in God."

cathman7 · « **Reply #11 on:** July 17, 2007, 11:27:41 AM »

Cletus · « **Reply #12 on:** July 17, 2007, 02:07:50 PM »

First he says that it is a problem that afflicts the consciences of ALL Catholics. Then he blithely leaves the problem to the theologians, as though it were some arcane angels-on-a-pinhead deal. Back and forth, back and forth...

cathman7 · « **Reply #13 on:** July 17, 2007, 04:28:49 PM »

Yet at the same time, he was the only bishop to take such a public stand for the cause of Tradition. He was trying to figure out on how to precisely respond to the Crisis in the Church and yet do you fault him for not coming to the sedevacantist conclusion?

Cletus · « **Reply #14 on:** July 17, 2007, 05:10:12 PM »

I fault him for being irrational. For adding two and two and coming up with either 666 or zero, depending on how he felt that day and how things were going. For saying extreme things about apostate Rome and antichrists in Rome that maybe for him were a way of letting off steam but became a philosophical and theological Twilight Zone for those who take his word and example as Gospel and Creed and have to reconcile those things with his softer words on Rome as only misguided in good faith and not SO bad.

One of the worst things he ever did was to point out the sins and failings of dead popes and to equate THAT kind of PERSONAL "badness" with the DOCTRINAL badness of the Vatican II putative popes. That was taking cruel advantage of the simplicity of the lowly faithful. It was what Scripture calls "making a lie." (And I hasten to add that as far as I know His Lordship did this only in passing and with some diffidence, not with the gleeful thoroughness of some lay SSPX apologists.)

I still think that there was something personally heroic about His Lordship's abortive efforts on behalf of Christ and Truth at the Council. I don't care to point the accusing finger at a worthy old man who brought himself to go so far in his stand against the Roman Antichrist but could bring himself no further.

On the other hand, I don't think that he has done any of us any favors. I had my tragedy as a Catholic in the 60s and he had his and my butcher had his. I reacted in my way and he reacted in his way and everyone else reacted in his way.

There was no latter day Athanasius against the world, no John faithful even unto Calvary while Peter cowered, no glorious upholder of the Catholic Way whom the faithful should see as raised up by God for their rescue from the Roman Pontiff and his New Pentecost. Archbishops, great neo-Thomist theologians, Portuguese Marian seers, Italian stigmatists, American Catholic schoolchildren, it was a matter of perfect democratic equality of loss and horror and wretched haplessness as Catholics.

But at least I was given the grace to be compromised as a Catholic (by the new catechesis) without putting my signature to my own compromising.

Author Topic: Abp. Lefebvre openly doubts Paul VI&#039;s claim to the papacy... (Read 6057 times)

Author Topic: Abp. Lefebvre openly doubts Paul VI's claim to the papacy... (Read 6057 times)