Well, right off the cuff, the part about Caiphas stands out as fantastically cretinous even in the realm of Traditionalist anti-sedevacantist polemic.

Don't you think so too?

I've written a lot about the stupidity and harmfulness of this kind of clueless, theologically retarded folk Catholicism before. I refer you to my record as to, for example, the deceitful charge that sedevacantists hold that popes can do no wrong.

Why replay Cletus' Greatest Hits?

But I'd be glad to wade through this vile drek and find -and mock and denounce- any new mainline Traditionalist Untruths To Live By.

If Guimaraes wrote this thing, who is Dan O'Connell?

site

Liberals did not popularize Nietzsche's "God is dead" dictum until the late 1960s. Nietzche died in 1900. So there is no question of some "astute wisecracker's" topping the blaspheming madman after this popularization with the observation that Nietzsche was dead.

This is an example of an observation that probably would strike me as catty and show-offish in another context. I don't mind tossing it in in this context. O'Connell says that he has THOUGHT a lot about sedevacantism. I doubt that that is true. I don't think that he THINKS much about anything. He barely looks at the evidence and the anecdotes which he marshalls in his unthinking campaign against his little black beasts, his favorite whipping boys, the sedevacantists.

He is not a careful writer or thinker. If you're daring to compare fellow orthodox Catholics to the worst Modernists on earth you had better show yourself to be an EXTREMELY careful thinker and writer.

What I noticed about O'Connell's attempt to refute 'sedevacantism' (of which[like 'racism'] there is no such thing), is that he doesn't point out that an anti-pope is an anti-pope first and foremost because his very election is fraudulent whether it be by simony or plain old vote fraud; John 23 was not legitimatly elected. True to form, it seems always to follow that the doctrines and morals( protecting perverts who attack small children) of an anti-pope are  heretical.

Boniface 8( who was protecting the same v2 apostate sect--at that time known as Templars) fits this scenario as well. I am not exactly sure but I believe the very election of Ben 15(XV?) to be a fraud also.

Just a further reminder to Classicom that the forum is awating your demonstration of where the 'inconsistancies' can be found in the Conciliar Church.

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

I should have pointed out first of all that the author of the above antisedevacantist tripe is a Feeneyhead.

Since O'Connell is so fixated on Caiphas it is especially fitting to pose the question, "What further need have we of witness?"

Why do some people think that because there is an apocalyptic crisis in the Church they have the right to revel in deceit and wallow in ignorance?

O'Connell's clumsy attempt at humor ("Ralph") falls flat because what he is really mocking is not sedevantism but all orthodox Catholic theology in the Scholastic tradition.

Divines such as St Bellarmine are the ones who spoke of papal unpoping in terms of a single l'il ole' heresy uttered publicly (or privately?) with obstinacy (or half-hearted off-handedness?). O'Connell is ridiculing them. He is riduculing also the whole mind-set behind such works as DE DEFECTIBUS. What if a priest sneezes between the "hic" and the "est'? What if he has the hiccups? What a hic count as THE "hic"?.

With the Vatican II top dogs we are dealing with heretics who herded together the world's bishops and made the corruption of the Faith and the destruction of souls the very mission of the church of Rome. To compare iniquity on the cosmic scale to the farcically fly-by-night scenario that O'Connell invents is dishonest. Or just stupid.

Even some sedevacantists justify the propagation of such dishonesty or stupidity on the grounds that "we have no pope to settle things." This too is dishonest or just stupid. We need no pope to tell us that it is wrong for us to mock the methodolgy of the Holy Doctors. Nor do we need a pope to tell us that it is wrong to tell what everyone knows to be the Big Lie that sedevacantists hold that popes are incapable of sin and human weakness.

*

I do not think that there was anything "great" about Padre Pio at the time of his death.

As a matter of fact, only God is great.

"Only God is good," the scrupulously truthful son of Joseph rather testily said in his capacity as Rabbi and prophet.

If God the Son risks appearing to be proximate to Arian or Adoptionist heresy in order to show His aversion to untruthful formulations ("Good Master") we should be very careful about whom we call great or good and the reasons why we do so.

Padre Pio treated someone who was not the Vicar of Christ as though he were. He counseled souls to have respect for and obey those who have no right to respect or obedience. In so doing he harmed souls immeasurably. I happen to believe that it would be sort of nice to think that he did so under duress and in Invincible Ignorance and that it's being nudgy to start speculating as to his guilt. Why not cut the poor old Beast-worshiping codger some slack? But the fact remains. Padre Pio lived a holy mystic and died a holy mystic who was also a big time pain in the neck as a Catholic muckety-muck.

*

Christ said only that the Pharisees and Scribes had sat on the chair of Moses. He said nothing about the heretical Sadducees who dominated the priestly class in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. Caiphas was a Sadducee. Therefore...

But this is an example of an occasion on which it can be SELF-defeating to slaughter one's adversary on his own grounds. O'Connell's comparison of the high priests of the doomed Temple to the popes of the indefectible Church of Christ, and then his claim that we should not be sedevacantists because Christ wasn't one, constitute such a clear outrage against truth that it might be wrong even to refute it.

Again, it is a traditional Traditionalist vice to create ungodly confusion and then defensively appeal to the fact that nowadays things are confusing. We need no pope, we need no prophet, we need no Messiah, to tell us that the high priests are apples and the popes are... Not oranges. Not even fruit. Not even round. Iguanas. Cacti. Icebergs.

I suspect that O'Connell knows as much about Sadducees and the tricky theology of Christian supercession over and against the Jєωs as he does about Nietzsche's timeline. Any writer can make a slip about a topic he's spotty on in a marginal analogy or show-off learned reference. One dislikes harping on such slips. But for the TIA to allow an ignoramus to accuse fellow Catholics of  showing lack of love for Jesus Christ and basing that accusation on his own absurd Caiphas/Ratzinger analogy...

But it's not just this one ignoramus pulling that particular rabbit out of his bag of tricks. I think that I've seen this cheesy Papa Caiphas trick performed before.

We would be on firm ground if we held that Christ utterly rejected Our Holy Father Caiphas, the Jerusalemite Pontiff, as a teacher of faith and morals. He saw the Temple bigwigs as being appointed to kill animals and wear golden robes with some good effect for the time being. But Israel was in no wise ordered to abide by or even listen to their false doctrine.

How does this relate to the papacy? The teaching of true doctine is essential to the papacy.

*

Caiphas should have believed that the Nazarene was the Christ?

Hardly.

It is probable that as a Sadducee Caiphas did not believe in the notion of Messiah any more than he believed in Providence and angels and the resurrection.

I doubt that Bossuet knew that. We have to be careful about whom from the Catholic Past we call great and good. In many ways those creaky old worthies are just a big bunch of dummies.