Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Crisis in the Church => Topic started by: MyrnaM on February 03, 2012, 12:25:53 PM
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Without quoting Church teaching and quotes from Saints, I was hoping we who are known as sedevantist, although in truth are Roman Catholics, might tell the story from their own words of why and how they have reached this point. I only suggest using your own words, because I thought it would help others here understand us better.
To be known as sedevantist is not a position as TKGS, has pointed out, something we rejoice in. In fact is quite difficult.
For myself: Vatican II started when I was in my early 20’s; having attended the poorest Catholic schools in Chicago all my life. I had the elderly priests and nuns teach me, they were sent to schools like mine, where they could live out their life without causing too much harm for the newer, younger Modern nuns and priest who were already knocking at the doors of Catholic Schools even prior to Vatican II.
I was one of the lucky ones, nuns who told me as a young child, that it was possible for even a pope to fall from grace, they explained to us, that popes although sin and some sin seriously can still be considered a True Pope, but they cannot change the teachings of Christ, because if they do, they no longer are Popes. I was taught that even the anti-popes throughout history, never changed the teachings of Christ. Which is why today, I cannot consider these counciLIAR popes anti-popes, in my mind they are not even that! Although I realize it is a term used by many.
Getting back to my personal story, having been taught from a child that yes, a pope can fall out of office, and having been taught this prior to Vatican II helped me face the awful truth.
I was also taught to pray every day, to be united to the Church that Jesus Christ founded, to love the truth and know the truth, exactly in those words. Words I added to my daily prayers. That little phrase also added to the grace I needed when I became very confused with the changes.
One nun in particular, before class would say daily, “good is good even if no one is doing it, and bad is bad even if everyone in the world is doing it”…this was imbedded in my mind, because she never missed a day, without telling this to us.
I was married at the age of 21, and started to have my babies, one after another, I became very busy and although attended Mass every Sunday, I fell asleep to the changes that were creeping in. Not till my children were old enough to attend the Catholic school in my neighborhood. As my children grew grew, I was realizing they were not Catholic. I started to ask them questions and wondered why they did not know simple basic Catholic truths, especially since they were in a Catholic school. My eyes started to open and I began to SEE again. What in the world was happening to the Catholic Church, I was thinking. About that same time, I found my rosary and scapular all rolled up in a ball with some trinkets in a shoe box. My thoughts were; Why am I not wearing this scapular, why am I not praying my daily rosary, and most importantly, why is it that I never hear from my priests about the importance of the rosary and scapular? I started to read; to make a long story short, I was waking up.
God left me in that dilemma for 5 more years, I continued going to Mass, my children we getting older and my non-Catholic husband was listening to my complaints every Sunday when I came home from Mass. In fact he was the person who brought the newspaper ad to me, an ad he found in the newspaper about a lecture from a Catholic priest to explain what was happening in the Catholic Church.
I felt this strong urge to attend this talk, and it was as if, I had all the pieces to the puzzle, and suddenly they all came together for me.
BTW, my husband is now Catholic, by the grace of God.
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So it sounds like if the SSPX had placed that newspaper ad and held that conference, you might not be a Sedevacantist today.
Because everything you describe (waking up, finding out about the Crisis in the Church, resolving to attend the Tridentine Mass and adhere to Catholic customs once again) could be done just as easily in the SSPX.
The fact that you decided to personally declare the See vacant seems to be an accident of fate -- a sedevacantist priest being in the right place at the right time.
You're just proving the CathInfo/Matthew position to be correct -- namely, "salvation is to be found in many traditional groups, both in and out of the Sedevacantist world."
But your story certainly does not show why the Sedevacantist position is better than the SSPX one. If that's what you were after, you still have some work to do.
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I seriously doubt it Matthew. Pope, no pope goes a lot deeper than that.
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You are probably correct, and I thought about that more times than you realize. Prior to my going to the lecture, I have never heard of SSPX or any traditional group anywhere. No Internet at that time. I wondered many times why it was that God led me to CMRI, and I wondered too, why He had me confused while in the novus ordo for 5 more years. I had no place to go, I thought; so I just stayed within the novus ordo, going to what I believed was still the Mass, like so many today. I was one of them.
You're just proving the CathInfo/Matthew position to be correct -- namely, "salvation is to be found in many traditional groups, both in and out of the Sedevacantist world."
I have never thought salvation could not be found within SSPX, in fact I have gone to SSPX several times within the last decade, here and there. Do you think I would go, if I believed otherwise.
I did not start this thread to convince anyone about sedevacantist one way or another, it is just that I sensed lately a strong hatred for us, so I was hoping by people telling their story in their own words, people might understand our journey better.
Matthew my words here are the absolute words of my experience, nothing added. In fact the only reason why God showed me CMRI over SSPX might be, He knew that I could accept the truth about the popes, and He also knows that some can not accept this truth, YET! Of course this is just my guess, I have never had direct message from God explaining why He does things the way He does.
I love stories, and found that most of them SSPX or otherwise always has something to do with the Blessed Mother, in my case it was getting back to my scapular and rosary.
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I think the number of CathInfo members who DO know me are in the minority.
I bet most of you wouldn't guess that I grew up in an independent chapel. The SSPX didn't factor in at all, since they were hours away. My mother was very favorable toward their cause, which inclined me the same direction, but I never set foot in one of their buildings until I was 23.
The independent chapel I attended was set up by Thomas A. Nelson (of TAN Books fame) under the aegis of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta. We had/have a pre-Vatican II, Polish Redemptorist priest there from 1979 - present. You may have heard of him -- Fr. (now Bishop) Frank Slupski.
(As an aside, my parents found this chapel right away, since they both worked at TAN Books. They worked -- AND MET EACH OTHER -- at TAN Books. So Tradition and I go way back... :laugh1:)
Bishop Slupski has publicly denied being sedevacantist -- but he was plenty scathing in his sermons about John Paul II -- a fellow Pole. The chapel had all sorts of characters over the years: families, singles, old, young, the pious, the strange, etc.
One thing our priest repeated over and over in his sermons, which has stuck with me over the years: "Be honest with yourself; be honest with God." reminding us that it's difficult and silly to fool ourselves, and impossible to fool God.
Our chapel had *zero* dealings with the "Church outside our chapel" -- no public marches, prayers outside abortion clinics, dealings with Novus Ordo priests/churches, etc. just as would be expected in any sedevacantist chapel. We were 100% aloof.
In fact, one family of 10 went Sedevacantist for a while, before they ended up at an SSPX chapel later on. If I were to guess, I'd say several parishioners there were personally sedevacantist.
Though the chapel wasn't officially Sedevacantist, it was certainly very tolerant -- even favorable toward it. Perhaps it's typical of an independent chapel?
So I'm not as much of a stranger to sedevacantism as some of you might think.
At the very least, I'm not a typical SSPX attendee. 99% of the SSPX Catholics I've met went to the Novus Ordo up to point X, when they found Tradition. I've only met a dozen or so who attended an independent chapel before they found the SSPX.
I'm just sharing this with you all in the interests of getting to know each other better.
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Thank you Matthew, this is what we need, a more personal touch of our journey toward our ultimate home, Heaven.
All this name calling, insults puts us, one another on the defensive, and we begin to hurt each other.
Maybe you should change the Title Topic Name to, Calling All Traditional Catholics
I would love to hear all the stories of anyone who cares to share.
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I expect the majority will shy clear. Assuming your permission, Myrna, I am going to fine tune things a bit and ask myself why I am a sedevacantist.
Well it took me 10 years and the internet to find out what was wrong with the Church. I went through phases---the pope doesn't know what is happening, the pope knows but is surrounded by bad guys and can't do anything, any old excuse would do. Then I got on the net and learned that the pope knew and approved what was going on.
For me it was simple. The Holy Ghost is head of the Church and He is indefectable. So if there are changes (and there certainly were) then it isn't the Holy Ghost. That leaves only satan. The clincher, though, was the loss of the Church's mission in false ecuмenism. Who but satan would ever lead us that way? The vatican is the seat of satan;he governs there. And those who sit in the vatican have no problem with that. I do. I want nothing to do with them.
What would be really, reallly nice is if people would assume that we are all doing our best according to our consciences. God didn't make us with a cookie cutter so it would be impossible for us all to be the same. Just a little respect would go a long way.
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What would be really, reallly nice is if people would assume that we are all doing our best according to our consciences. God didn't make us with a cookie cutter so it would be impossible for us all to be the same. Just a little respect would go a long way.
Well, I hate to say it, but I don't know where the heck this anti- sede vibe has come from! I also, am no sede, but something happened to make Matthew take a harder line on the sede-thesis recently. Its either that, or maybe he never liked it, but has been so busy with work, he's not had much time to control things the way he wants around here, until now. But I don't think its completely the latter, even before, he wasn't so outspoken on the issue.
Maybe him and that annoying guy Augstine Baker are best buds...
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Maybe him and that annoying guy Augstine Baker are best buds...
I don't know Baker, but am wondering why you think he's annoying. I'm sure I've not read but a small fraction of his posts, but I've not seen anything I found annoying.
PS. The rule that Sede discussion be kept in the Crisis subforum is not a new one even if it is difficult to abide by and equally difficult to enforce.
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What would be really, reallly nice is if people would assume that we are all doing our best according to our consciences. God didn't make us with a cookie cutter so it would be impossible for us all to be the same. Just a little respect would go a long way.
Well, I hate to say it, but I don't know where the heck this anti- sede vibe has come from! I also, am no sede, but something happened to make Matthew take a harder line on the sede-thesis recently. Its either that, or maybe he never liked it, but has been so busy with work, he's not had much time to control things the way he wants around here, until now. But I don't think its completely the latter, even before, he wasn't so outspoken on the issue.
Maybe him and that annoying guy Augstine Baker are best buds...
Nothing has changed -- I just have to periodically come in and knock some heads, in order to keep things in balance. I don't want this to become a Sede board, or a de-facto Sede board.
From time to time I have to vocally remind people that this is an SSPX-friendly board. Or, a haven for SSPX attendees.
I want to remind everyone that I'm not remaining silent because they have me in awe of their arguments -- no, I'm just very busy. So from time to time I have to come on here and remind the Sedes that I consider their position as imprudent as they consider mine unreasonable.
In other words, I want to remind the Sedes that the SSPX position is NOT weak or on the defensive. Far from it -- from my position of strength I'm even able to go on the offensive whenever I feel like it.
Trinity -- you're making this too personal. I am criticizing the Sede position NOT individual Sedes. You've been here a long time, you should know what an abstract discussion is by now. If I didn't think you Sedes were all doing your best, and were Catholic, you wouldn't be here. Not a single one of you.
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I've a soft spot in my heart for everyone who is going through these terrible times. It truly is hard on souls, and should bring a tear to every eye.
I've heard more than one person speak about it, and what can I say?
May God help us all, and keep us close, guide us to all truth, keep us from all error, and console our poor hearts.
Sacred Heart of Jesus keep us! Let us trust in the Lord in all difficulties, all is within His Providence.
Matthew, not to get off topic, are you still in touch with Thomas Nelson? How is he doing?
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Matthew, not to get off topic, are you still in touch with Thomas Nelson? How is he doing?
Well, he's trying to make a living outside the Catholic book publishing business where he made 100% of his living since 1967. That's got to be hard!
But as far as I know he's doing OK. He's surviving, and he's still in good health.
If he was having any major problems, I'd probably find out about it -- he's a relative, after all. (He's my dad's uncle.) In fact, my folks still attend Mass with him every Sunday.
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Thank you Matthew, this is what we need, a more personal touch of our journey toward our ultimate home, Heaven.
All this name calling, insults puts us, one another on the defensive, and we begin to hurt each other.
Maybe you should change the Title Topic Name to, Calling All Traditional Catholics
I would love to hear all the stories of anyone who cares to share.
That sounds like a great idea -- I can change the title.
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And you, Matthew, can relax entirely. We all KNOW this is an SSPX board and no one dare diss them even if they want to. You also know that long before those rules I did not diss the SSPX. I'm sorry you sometimes feel the need to put us down. It has not made for good relations.
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Well, I hate to say it, but I don't know where the heck this anti- sede vibe has come from! I also, am no sede, but something happened to make Matthew take a harder line on the sede-thesis recently.
Probably because of the dogmatic sedes who have posted here in the past (i.e David Landry, David Hobson, Richard Ibranyi, Frank Pagnanelli and so forth) who didn't show any respect towards the fact that Matthew lets them post on his forum; Instead they chose to condemn him for not being sede.
Of course, I agree with you that non-sede Trads should be sympathetic towards sedes and their position, I'm just saying. Afterall, if I were in Matthew's position and I had that many sedes act that way towards me, I'd probably be turned off by the position myself. Fortunetly, people here such as Myrna, Raoul, PartyIsOver, TKGS, Hobbledehoy, Trinity, etc. have shown me what the majority of sedes are like: kind people who really know their Faith.
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I don't know Baker, but am wondering why you think he's annoying. I'm sure I've not read but a small fraction of his posts, but I've not seen anything I found annoying.
He's annoying for two reasons:
1- He acts as if he runs this place
2- He acts nasty towards people who even remotely criticize Benedict and Vatican II.
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Now that Matthew has agreed to change to Title of the forum from "Calling all Sedevacantist" to "Calling All Traditional Catholics" more people will come and give their story.
When I meet new people at Mount St. Michael, I usually end up asking them how they found and what happened to cause the to accept Tradition, as I said before it usually has something to do with the Blessed Mother.
Don't worry SS, to much about Augustine Baker, if he sticks around long enough he might learn something.
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SS,why don't you put that Baker's name on my list. I really think that the list of stinkers will correspond with the freak sede's list. And it is only justice to be explicit about who is guilty and who not. How much hardship and heartache could be avoided by taking that bit of care? Also when people are asked for proof of their accusations and refuse to give it, why are they kept on?
q
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In other words, I want to remind the Sedes that the SSPX position is NOT weak or on the defensive. Far from it -- from my position of strength I'm even able to go on the offensive whenever I feel like it.
Your reminder, of course, is your opinion, Matthew.
My opinion is that the SSPX position is weak and purely on the defensive.
An opinion with no basis in fact or theology.
I also want to remind Sedes that they are the guests here, and the SSPX position has the coveted "first place". Regardless of your opinions.
I also like to stick up for the SSPX in the interests of truth. The SSPX has nothing to be ashamed of, but rather everything to be proud of, when it comes to JUDGING THE FRUITS.
Yes, there are some good fruits here and there in the Sedevacantist world, but let me tell you -- they are everywhere in the SSPX world as well. So the position can't be as wrong as men like Raoul76 and Cupertino would have you believe.
I criticize the sedevacantist position, but I like to think I'm charitable toward individual sedevacantists. I let them participate on this forum unless they're of the can't-get-along-with-others dogmatic variety. But when it comes right down to it, I still disagree with them, and I think they're wrong. Just like plenty of them think I'm wrong.
It's a shame, but nevertheless true that if you give latitude to certain groups, they take it and beat you over the head with it. Just like the Protestants did to the Catholics in the colony of Maryland over a couple centuries ago. Closer to home, many sedevacantists chime in on every thread, turning threads of every conceivable topic into sedevacantist arguments. In short, many people complain about "all the Sedes that have taken over CathInfo", and I don't like that. I don't want this forum to become a ghetto of sedevacantism. No thanks; especially since I'm not even a sedevacantist myself!
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It would really help all concerned if the renegades were banned. Heck, I can't even get up a list of them.
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Trinity that's because right now, no one wants to stick their head in the chopping block. :dwarf:
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Nuts!! They have the devil's own luck! Thanks for advising me, Myrna.
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also like to stick up for the SSPX in the interests of truth. The SSPX has nothing to be ashamed of, but rather everything to be proud of, when it comes to JUDGING THE FRUITS.
Yes, there are some good fruits here and there in the Sedevacantist world, but let me tell you -- they are everywhere in the SSPX world as well
Yes, but everyone knows that many in the SSPX are sedevacantist, including priests and nuns.
I will make a prediction: Someday, but I don't know if it will be in my lifetime, but certainly it will be in Matthew's lifetime, all of SSPX will be sedevacantist, if this crisis continue before Jesus returns.
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I will make a prediction: Someday, but I don't know if it will be in my lifetime, but certainly it will be in Matthew's lifetime, all of SSPX will be sedevacantist, if this crisis continue before Jesus returns.
Given the circuмstances, as well as the prophecies, I don't think that will happen. For one thing, we can't be too far away from a chastisement. If I myself could make a prediction, I would say that within the next 15 years, the three days of darkness will come, probably within the next 10 years. In fact, the chastisement COULD happen this year! Only God knows exactly when it will happen, but all I can say is that God will not allow the evil in this world to stretch on too much longer before He puts an end to it.
You also have to take into consideration that the non-sedes in the Society are pretty much split into two different groups: you have Bishop Fellay and those who share his beliefs who seem strongly opposed to sedevacantism, and then you have those who sympathize with sedevacantists (these people's views tend to be more in-line with Bishop Williamson's). And of course, you have those in the Society who are already sede. So when you take all of this into consideration, it woudn't be difficult to believe that a split would happen should there be any "reconciliation" with Rome.
And getting back to Prophecies, one prophecy happens to predict that the man who will be elected AFTER Benedict will be the "Bishop in white" who Consecrates Russia.
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Myrna, thank you for this topic. I feel like I went through something very similar. I married at the age of 20, to my best friend and classmate. We had 4 children. I stayed at home with them. (My mom was catholic and my dad a convert and had 9 children. we were schooled by SSND from 1960-the 70's. We saw the subtle changes take place. As soon as the Our Father was like that of the Protestant version I asked, "What going on?" My husband and I were military and so we got whatever catholic church there was. We did not get what was happening til 1990.) So, we arrived in AZ and I got involved with a ladies group. I taught NFP and came to see that that group was with witches at the top! (That doesn't make the design of God wrong, but it was infiltrated and all materials were secular) So, I remained independent. But I always wanted Truth, be it any situation. So, with this ladies group, we were out to find who was the pusher and promotor of sex ed. in the schools of AZ. I testified at our capitol and wrote editorials and did alot of reading. I read federal grants and we found out who was the biggest pusher; the New Order Church. We had all the docuмents and proof before us! So, it was 1995 and by 1996 we found a traditional church by Fr. Leblanc (RIP). He was not a sede as we say. I told my husband of this traditional church as he remembered it as an altar server. I told my husband that I had been to the thrift stores and estate sales and was ready with veils for all us girls, skirts and missals. After 2 Masses, we were there for good. But I still had alot of reading to do to understand all that was happening. Fr. Leblanc was doing the same. He had a most beautiful book and religious store. Everyone in the valley loved coming! Well, a month before Fr. Leblanc died he asked me a few questions and I was afraid he would blow me away but he did not. He asked me, "Is this pope heretical?" I answered "Yes, because he is manifest, outwardly in his actions and books, you will know them by their fruits." Then he asked me, " If he is, is he Catholic?" I answered "he is not Catholic." Then he asked, "If he is not Catholic, can he be pope?" I answered, "No." Well, he walked back to his rectory satisfied. And I felt relieved that I was not yelled at. Ha! Fr. Leblanc was known as independent and anti-sede but before he died, he was sede -v. So, that is how I came to know, by reading and the web sites that consider themselves to be Traditional. I listen to all sides. My opinion is that this pope was also not catholic when nominated and elected. He was never crowned. Reading the Final Conclave and others in regard to the actions of those who infiltrated tell the real story of how the marxist take over of what appeared to be a minority can take things into their own hands. Chapter 12 of Daniel says that the eternal sacrifice will come to an end. I have the opinion that we are near to this. So, that is where I am coming from. But I have had indefectability brought up to me. And I have the opinion that those who hold to it, do not understand that a Pope is not God, he is human, and can err. When it comes to the heresy against Salvation outside the Church, that is the one sin a pope can not have, in order to be pope. I am CMRI.
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Ah, but the Holy Ghost can not err and He is either head of the Church or not. If He is then the things that matter can not change. And the mission of the Church matters, big time.
I've been thinking about something Matthew said and something he didn't say. He said I took it personally. You were joking weren't you Matthew? Of course I took it personally. This is my Church that is being vilified by these frauds and then further put down because of these fraud's behavior. Might as well put down one of my children. And don't tell me you wouldn't be upset if your Church was so maltreated.
What you didn't say, and I am very curious about, is what thought or thoughts convinced you that 'recognize and resist' is the right path. What makes you an SSPX er? "I followed someone here" doesn't get it. There had to be that moment of truth and conviction.
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Thanks songbird for your addition, all stories are very interesting.
Like Matthew’s story, my guess is many posters here were raised in Tradition, unlike mine where I was led into the novus ordo, then had to find my way back into the Church.
My writing a little about myself got me to thinking back in time. I found CMRI in 1982, and in my family we didn’t get our first computer till 1989, and I didn’t even touch it till the middle of the 90’s. When I finally started to dabble with the computer, I was shocked to see some information about the novus ordo vs. Tradition. In the year 2000 I created my own web site, www.seatofwisdom.com
Actually looking at it now, it is very primitive, with some mistakes and typos and I have not updated it for years. I am almost to the point of asking another Traditional Catholic to take it over for me. I just paid another 3 years for the domain, but I am just not interested any more in keeping it up. I have trouble remembering all the HTML codes and just would rather read the lives of the Saints, then “HTML for dummies”.
It was difficult for me, when I realized I had to just stop going to my neighborhood church and drive 15 miles to a regular house that was converted into a chapel. No one actually lived there and from the outside it looked just like a home. We had the Blessed Sacrament on the altar and were asked to come and make holy hours, daily if possible. Every couple of months a priest would come and administer the Sacraments to us, offer Mass and leave again.
It was hard for my children too, to understand what was going on. One week we were at a “Mass” with guitars playing, everyone shaking hands, chewing gum, with a priest on the altar telling jokes, etc. etc. and all of a sudden I was taking them to this house were people were just sitting there, silently praying their rosary or other devotions.
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Without quoting Church teaching and quotes from Saints, I was hoping we who are known as sedevantist, although in truth are Roman Catholics, might tell the story from their own words of why and how they have reached this point. I only suggest using your own words, because I thought it would help others here understand us better.
To be known as sedevantist is not a position as TKGS, has pointed out, something we rejoice in. In fact is quite difficult.
For myself: Vatican II started when I was in my early 20’s; having attended the poorest Catholic schools in Chicago all my life. I had the elderly priests and nuns teach me, they were sent to schools like mine, where they could live out their life without causing too much harm for the newer, younger Modern nuns and priest who were already knocking at the doors of Catholic Schools even prior to Vatican II.
I was one of the lucky ones, nuns who told me as a young child, that it was possible for even a pope to fall from grace, they explained to us, that popes although sin and some sin seriously can still be considered a True Pope, but they cannot change the teachings of Christ, because if they do, they no longer are Popes. I was taught that even the anti-popes throughout history, never changed the teachings of Christ. Which is why today, I cannot consider these counciLIAR popes anti-popes, in my mind they are not even that! Although I realize it is a term used by many.
Getting back to my personal story, having been taught from a child that yes, a pope can fall out of office, and having been taught this prior to Vatican II helped me face the awful truth.
I was also taught to pray every day, to be united to the Church that Jesus Christ founded, to love the truth and know the truth, exactly in those words. Words I added to my daily prayers. That little phrase also added to the grace I needed when I became very confused with the changes.
One nun in particular, before class would say daily, “good is good even if no one is doing it, and bad is bad even if everyone in the world is doing it”…this was imbedded in my mind, because she never missed a day, without telling this to us.
I was married at the age of 21, and started to have my babies, one after another, I became very busy and although attended Mass every Sunday, I fell asleep to the changes that were creeping in. Not till my children were old enough to attend the Catholic school in my neighborhood. As my children grew grew, I was realizing they were not Catholic. I started to ask them questions and wondered why they did not know simple basic Catholic truths, especially since they were in a Catholic school. My eyes started to open and I began to SEE again. What in the world was happening to the Catholic Church, I was thinking. About that same time, I found my rosary and scapular all rolled up in a ball with some trinkets in a shoe box. My thoughts were; Why am I not wearing this scapular, why am I not praying my daily rosary, and most importantly, why is it that I never hear from my priests about the importance of the rosary and scapular? I started to read; to make a long story short, I was waking up.
God left me in that dilemma for 5 more years, I continued going to Mass, my children we getting older and my non-Catholic husband was listening to my complaints every Sunday when I came home from Mass. In fact he was the person who brought the newspaper ad to me, an ad he found in the newspaper about a lecture from a Catholic priest to explain what was happening in the Catholic Church.
I felt this strong urge to attend this talk, and it was as if, I had all the pieces to the puzzle, and suddenly they all came together for me.
BTW, my husband is now Catholic, by the grace of God.
wow, Myrna I think you're the answer I've been searching for, I was Baptized , communed, and confirmed in nouvos ordo and as I grew I realized I was one foot with the devil and one foot with God and wondered why muslim girls around me were so disciplined while I was wild, was my faith not strong enough? I see wthat I wasn't taught right, I was mislead, I recently began dating a sede who introduced me to trad mass and further more to the idea that the seat is vacant, I can see truths in this and I admire your boldness and wisdom for you have witnessed the changes from the get whereas my father has been brushed under the rug like the others, how can I open his eyes and continue opening mine?
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Without quoting Church teaching and quotes from Saints, I was hoping we who are known as sedevantist, although in truth are Roman Catholics, might tell the story from their own words of why and how they have reached this point. I only suggest using your own words, because I thought it would help others here understand us better.
To be known as sedevantist is not a position as TKGS, has pointed out, something we rejoice in. In fact is quite difficult.
For myself: Vatican II started when I was in my early 20’s; having attended the poorest Catholic schools in Chicago all my life. I had the elderly priests and nuns teach me, they were sent to schools like mine, where they could live out their life without causing too much harm for the newer, younger Modern nuns and priest who were already knocking at the doors of Catholic Schools even prior to Vatican II.
I was one of the lucky ones, nuns who told me as a young child, that it was possible for even a pope to fall from grace, they explained to us, that popes although sin and some sin seriously can still be considered a True Pope, but they cannot change the teachings of Christ, because if they do, they no longer are Popes. I was taught that even the anti-popes throughout history, never changed the teachings of Christ. Which is why today, I cannot consider these counciLIAR popes anti-popes, in my mind they are not even that! Although I realize it is a term used by many.
Getting back to my personal story, having been taught from a child that yes, a pope can fall out of office, and having been taught this prior to Vatican II helped me face the awful truth.
I was also taught to pray every day, to be united to the Church that Jesus Christ founded, to love the truth and know the truth, exactly in those words. Words I added to my daily prayers. That little phrase also added to the grace I needed when I became very confused with the changes.
One nun in particular, before class would say daily, “good is good even if no one is doing it, and bad is bad even if everyone in the world is doing it”…this was imbedded in my mind, because she never missed a day, without telling this to us.
I was married at the age of 21, and started to have my babies, one after another, I became very busy and although attended Mass every Sunday, I fell asleep to the changes that were creeping in. Not till my children were old enough to attend the Catholic school in my neighborhood. As my children grew grew, I was realizing they were not Catholic. I started to ask them questions and wondered why they did not know simple basic Catholic truths, especially since they were in a Catholic school. My eyes started to open and I began to SEE again. What in the world was happening to the Catholic Church, I was thinking. About that same time, I found my rosary and scapular all rolled up in a ball with some trinkets in a shoe box. My thoughts were; Why am I not wearing this scapular, why am I not praying my daily rosary, and most importantly, why is it that I never hear from my priests about the importance of the rosary and scapular? I started to read; to make a long story short, I was waking up.
God left me in that dilemma for 5 more years, I continued going to Mass, my children we getting older and my non-Catholic husband was listening to my complaints every Sunday when I came home from Mass. In fact he was the person who brought the newspaper ad to me, an ad he found in the newspaper about a lecture from a Catholic priest to explain what was happening in the Catholic Church.
I felt this strong urge to attend this talk, and it was as if, I had all the pieces to the puzzle, and suddenly they all came together for me.
BTW, my husband is now Catholic, by the grace of God.
also, what bothers my father and I is maybe God wants us to be obedient to evil men for some reason we ccannot fathom
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Here is my story:
During this Lent when we are on a journey toward purging our lives of sin and conditioning our bodies, minds and souls, I would very much like to share my conversion to the true Faith in the hopes that it may inspire at least one more to cross the bridge of reality that leads to truth.
I will be brief as possible with the background and with the actual transformation without neglecting the vital information that led to this conversion.
I grew up a nominal, small, Novus Ordo family raised by two wonderful, loving parents who had me baptized eighteen days after my birth on September 26, 1965. These parents made sure I went to Mass (sic) every week (Saturday evenings) and spent lots of money so that I could go to a “Catholic” school.
Together with my other sibling, my sister, I grew up thinking I was a good enough Catholic, you know, fulfilling the minimal requirements of weekly Mass, Confession at least once a year and a healthy (sic) respect for God. At least compared to the kids in my neighborhood I was a pretty good guy. Realistically I was like anyone else in that I was headed straight for hell unless I could legitimately claim invincible ignorance.
Nothing perceptible was happening to me spiritually (apart from feeling like I was floating after my first Confession at the age of seven) until 1986 when, for a reason I cannot recall, I started wearing the Brown Scapular. Shortly after that, I started praying the rosary somewhat regularly, and, by the early 90’s, I started to take what I perceived to be Catholicism seriously, due in part to my joining the Legion of Mary and meeting up with people my age. For the first time in my life, I felt I was with people that took their faith very seriously and lived their lives accordingly. This was a rather refreshing change in that all my friends, up until that time, were delinquents, and most came from broken homes.
A large reason why I started to take my faith seriously shortly after I met my conservative Novus Ordo friends was because I learned what the Church taught regarding abortion and contraception. I was very pleased that there was a place one could go, if one were so inclined, to find ultimate truth and answers to the “confusing” questions of the day – for this truth was from Christ Himself infallibly teaching through the Church He founded on the Rock of Peter.
From there I started going to daily Mass (sic). I started reading and listening to all the conservative Novus Ordo materials and lectures I could and became one of those conservative Novus Ordo types, you know the kind of Catholic that believes in such things as intrinsic truth and moral absolutes and that sort of stuff. I learned (you will notice I had not learned anything distinctively Catholic, to speak of, at home or at “Catholic” school), to some extant, how not to be a relativist and started to grasp the concept of logic and the place it holds over mere emotion.
But I was still naïve; VERY naïve. I was under the impression that the "clown" I thought to be pope at the time was the epitomé of Catholicism. I beg you to excuse my use of the word “clown” I use the term, not judging the inner disposition of the man, but in comparison to the preconciliar popes, whose writings I later familiarized myself with and having done that I now use the word clown, when describing the words, writings and actions of the man who claimed to be pope for over a quarter century knowing I could accurately use words more derogatory than the word I have chosen. And, after all, who turned things more into a circus than John Paul II?
I saw the blindness all around me. I saw it in my parents, I saw it in my friends, I saw it in all my elder co-workers (I was a young pup at the time). I was rather disillusioned having finally seen the light, that all these people who should know these things have become willfully blind to the obvious facts that they once firmly believed - such things as the evilness of contraception - and how they now have no outward opinion on the matter. Why were my elders not as excited about the truth as me? Why did they never teach me this truth? Why do they claim to be Catholic and practice contraception? Why don’t they go to Confession but once a year, if that much?
I guess I was always a rebel, and God has a knack for taking your misguided energy and applying it to a good cause (see Saint Paul and Saint Augustine). I would stand up for what I believed in and be willing to take the unpopular stand if I thought I was right in doing so. I was a blind fool, but I had courage and wanted to do the right thing, and knew that it mattered more what God thought than what other people think. Being under the illusion that God was this nice guy who had the “boys will be boys” attitude, I lived more of a "fun" life than a pious, committed Catholic life. It takes time to realize the error of our ways and I was no exception to this.
So the rebel in me felt the need to challenge my elders on the issue of contraception and I was often met with silence or emotional responses lacking any semblance of logic. I wonder if this was the type of response the 12-year-old Jesus got at the Temple when speaking with His elder experts.
I could see, all around me, how people my age were raised in a very worldly sort of way, and I saw the consequences of this worldly way of thinking which they were taught to embrace. I wanted children to grow up knowing that sex outside of marriage was wrong, and that contraception was a mortal sin, and I wanted their parents to know and admit the same thing.
But that is the doctrinal side of my conversion. As I mentioned earlier, I started going to daily “Mass” in the early nineties and for reasons the readers of this site are familiar with, I became somewhat disillusioned with some things going on in the liturgy. As with contraception and other “confusing” teachings of doctrine I had to get to the core of the problem with the liturgy. Why were these adults (priests) who should know better doing and allowing the things they were doing and allowing pertaining to the liturgy? Why did it seem that they did not know better? Were not some of them raised at a time when this nonsense was not going on?
Well I mentioned earlier my fondness for John Paul II and I figured none of these abuses had anything to do with him. In fact I “knew” that he was a light in the world to guide me through all this chaos. My interest in the subject of contraception led me to read Humanae Vitae by Paul VI (I was reading all these “conservative” Novus Ordo periodicals and I had not heard of Casti Connubii by Pope Pius XI. Even though I was referred to Humanae Vitae countless times, never a peep about a much more concise and uncompromising encyclical before Vatican II). So I read every encyclical JPII wrote as I considered them to be the next best thing to scripture – the Sacred Tradition of the Church Christ founded on Peter and the blood of the martyrs. I later found out that Sacred Tradition is equal with Sacred Scripture but that is a different story.
I mentioned earlier that I was still naïve as I was growing in my understanding of the Catholic faith, I mention this because in my naiveté , first of all I believed that I “knew for sure” that JPII was in fact a pope, but after, and, as a result of that, I assumed whatever he wrote in his official capacity touching on faith and morals to the world was infallible (and this is one thing I was right about, if he was in fact pope). Having read the Bible a few times and having read all of JPII’s encyclicals in the “light” of “whatever he writes is true” I was convinced (not because of his writings because I did not fully understand a lot that he wrote but because “I knew” that whatever he wrote was true, whether it made sense or not and, besides, all the “conservative” “experts” kept proclaiming his greatness, so ultimately I eliminated a cause for the problems in the Church as any good conservative Novus Ordinarian would and that is the pope) that the problems we were having in the Church had absolutely nothing to do with the man himself. Evidently, the good confused people of Novus Ordo land never heard of the saying "The buck stops at the top."
So I went through the 90’s as a conservative Novus Ordinarian having absolutely no idea what the dogmatic Council of Trent infallibly taught or what the preconciliar Popes taught. Yes, I was one of those: one of those going on blind obedience, one who couldn't see that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes.
I am here today to tell you that you cannot be a Catholic if you do not know what the Council of Trent taught or the preconciliar Popes passed down. Without the foundation of the Faith, firmly upheld and soldified at Trent, you can be anything else, and I mean ANYTHING, but you cannot be Catholic.
It took me a while to realize that because, having become an “expert” in my funny new New Order world, I started to learn of varying distinctions between “Catholics.” Primarily there were the liberals and the conservatives. Initially my thought was that the conservatives were right and the liberals were wrong. Later I clarified this position by adding a third label to Catholics and that is the term “orthodox”. You had your conservatives, your liberals and your orthodox. The orthodox were the conservatives. Considering myself an orthodox Catholic, labeled conservative by the liberals who were the majority, I latched onto the “beacon of orthodoxy” EWTN. Yes, they would sort this mess of grown-ups with childish faith - not knowing good and evil and priests not knowing proper liturgical practice for me.
This was, for a temporary time in my life, a place of refuge for me, a place where the people there “felt my pain,” they knew what it was all about, and they were going to do their part to fix it, or so I thought.
As I was progressing in my authentic understanding of true Catholicism I was becoming more and more “conservative”. I was subscribing to periodicals such as Adoremus and becoming more “picky” with which “Mass” I would attend. Plus, by this time I had heard of the “indult." You know, the "indult" was the result of Ecclesia Dei which, were it not for Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, there might not even have been that to serve as a bridge between the new aberration and the old rite. At the time I looked at the "indult" as that thing where JPII was so nice that he “allowed” us to have that old Mass if we were still attached to it so those knee-jerk traditional reactionaries could be appeased and stop “disobeying” “Peter”. While, as I later learned, the "indult" was really a stop-gap desperate measure to demean the Society of St. Pius X and put them out of business, if you will, it has backfired on the modern Vatican apparatchiks for the Society and many other Traditional orders and independents have spread whereas the "indult" has been compromised and under the thumb of the New Order bishops who, as I can see today, have no intention of appeasing those who want to worship as Catholics always did prior to Vatican II.
I do not have to describe what my first Catholic Mass was like to readers of The Daily Catholic and how much different it is than the new order thing they refer to today as "eucharistic celebration," not to mention the reverence of the priest and people and the modesty and appropriateness with which the people dress and conduct themselves.
This awakening led to me being turned on to such periodicals as the Wanderer and the Latin Mass Magazine and learn how terrible the bishops were and how wonderful the Pope was as I further moved onwards in my quest for truth regarding the root cause of all the seemingly avoidable problems found so readily in what I still thought was the Church. I was still far from understanding how the “indult” was a God-given right of all true Catholics and how the new service, far from being appropriate for our times, may not even be valid as I still alternated my Sundays between a Latin ad orientum Novus Ordo with a great polyphonic choir and homilist and the “indult” which the Novus Ordo priest rushed through.
In fact, as of yet, I was not aware of how the rite for ordination had been changed, or the rite for all the other sacraments, or the consecration of bishops, or the renunciation of the tiara by the “pope,” or the abolition of the Oath against Modernism. I was merely aware of how that powerful Saint Michael Prayer has been abolished at the end of the new service for no apparent reason. Looking back, I, probably like so many others in retrospect, should have asked more questions earlier.
It took a spark to ignite my curiosity and that came when reading Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s, “Reform of the Liturgical Reform” with forward by Cardinal Ratzinger so it couldn’t be one of those kooky traditional things I had been warned about. That was one of the fixtures of the propaganda against Traditionalists by the conservative clan of Novus Ordinarians: beware of the evil far-right Trads or integrists. I often wonder how many are prevented from attending the True Latin Mass because of those threats and slander. Anyway, through this book, I learned precisely what the Conciliar popes did to the Catholic Mass and this was an essential component of my wake-up call.
I was now coming to grovel with the fact that a pope could do questionable things or imprudent things not touching on faith or morals. I already knew that they could sin and have private false opinions and even public false opinions not binding on the faithful; but that they could even make a complete clean break with Tradition regarding her most prized possession – The Perpetual Sacrifice (I was forced to assume that the Mass had nothing to do with faith and morals) - and still claim to be Catholic. I was growing very slowly, but obviously, I had a lot yet to learn.
I was still under the impression that JPII was a good Catholic man and that he was doing the best he could, though my impression of Paul VI was waning considerably. Ultimately, when all the evidence presented itself and I was able to sort it out, I have concluded that JPII was even worse than Paul VI for he was given much more time to make things right, and he did not. Some might say "perhaps he did do his best," but when you examine his words and deeds, really examine them, you can see, as I discovered. that he certainly was not a good Catholic. That was one of the most painful revelations in my journey to truth. I suspect that very point about the "pope" has been a major obstacle for many in not being able to go further in their journey. They're stuck in neutral, realizing something's wrong, but not willing to find out the truth for fear they would have to change their ways and thinking. In other words, that life of ease would come to an end in the way they knew it. It's called a comfort zone and many don't want to leave it.
Regarding the new mass, I had been led to believe that Paul VI made some sort of blunder; you know the rational we've all been fed that he did not really have any control over, and that JPII was traditional, having no idea that he was in fact a modernist, and, more accurately, one of the key leaders of the modernist revolt. I had brought a lot of garbage with me from conciliar circles, and I was fast becoming aware of the fact I had been deceived as to the real differences between the True Mass of the Tridentine Rite and the new mass made up by man; and yet, I still believed at this stage in my transformation process that the new mass was good, albeit a far less perfect (certainly nothing to become “schismatic” over) offering to God than the true Mass. But that hadn't taken priority in my life yet. It was coming, but oh so slowly and stubbornly.
Somewhere during this time I came across Pope Pius XI encyclical on Christian Marriage entitled Casti Connubii and become a huge fan of it; making that my user name on a single’s site. Even at that point, I had not yet done any thorough comparisons between preconcilar and conciliar papal writings. I was, if the term is appropriate, a 'surface semi-traditionalist.' That being said, there was a debate in Latin Mass Magazine between Janet Smith and John Galvin on the Catholicity of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae when compared to the aforesaid Casti Connubii. I was captivated by the debate and became an immediate admirer of John Galvin, who had written on the topic of pre and post conciliar writings in a way that I had never heard expressed before. John would later play an integral role in my conversion to True Catholicism.
True, I had learned that not only were the problems within the Church the results of some overzealous liberal lay people, but the result of bad priests and bishops as well; not only that, but I had learned that even popes could, did, and do authorize unCatholic things in their official capacity as “pope.” This should be a red-flag to all even if they consider such aberrations officially “Catholic.” Actually, they can’t consider such Catholic, but it would be some time before I became fully aware of this and convinced.
Those rusty cogs in my brain were starting to turn. I kept thinking, " Well, well, well, if Pope Pius XI writing is so much different than Paul VI on the same topic how would other preconciliar Papal writings compare with conciliar papal writings?" Hmm. I want to point out here that I am not talking so much about style, which is also different in that it is so much clearer and to the point, but as regards to the substance of the message. That is something so lacking in conciliar and postconciliar docuмents: substance! But at the time, I was not quite ready to delve into that yet. I was still trying to learn, quite sincerely, how bad the new Mass was and why, and how many bad, unCatholic things a pope could do and teach to the world in his official capacity as pope regarding faith and morals and still be pope. Also, I was struggling with the question of whether disobeying a pope was a sin, even a mortal sin. Did all Traditional Catholics go to hell like Archbishop Lefebvre as we were mistakenly led to believe? Needless to say, I had a lot to learn.
It was not too long after, that I was firmly convinced as to the evilness of contraception and all willful spilling of the seed. That realization translated into my being onslaughted by “conservative” “catholic” types about how necessary Natural Family Planning (NFP) was for the modern orthodox Catholic family. NFP? What was that? Oh, it was when you used charts and thermometers and stuff like that to plan; or more commonly, avoid, your pregnancies. I had to ask: "How did Adam and Eve plan their pregnancies?" Maybe after the fall they retained a part of the preternatural gifts that allowed them to plan their pregnancies without charts or thermometers. But don’t worry I was told, if you get married you will be force-fed at the pre-marriage meetings all the stuff you would need to know about the topic of NFP otherwise they would’t let you get married. They? Oh really? Well, I thought, I had better brush up on that because I didn't want to speak out against contraception without knowing the full story. This whole ordeal had been going on within me before I read the John Galvin piece in Latin Mass Magazine. Now I had progressed a bit on that issue by the time I read that, but still had a ways to go. In fact, I had been publicly questioning some EWTN “experts” on just that issue with unsatisfactory results, and, by coincidence, John and I would get each others' e-mail address through that forum.
My curiosity and search for truth took over, and I did searches on the Q&A portion of EWTN’s forums, searching for anything asked by John. I wanted to go to school on his logic by reading all his questions and the responses with a particular interest. The questions are what were captivating for me, and slowly but surely I realized these so-called “experts” obviously could not answer him without dancing around the issue. We came to find out that we both asked numerous questions regarding the Mass and contraception that were never responded to at all, obviously because, if they had given the correct answers, they would be admitting too much about the state of the new church. To be truthful would have forced them to admit that Vatican II is not orthodox, that the new mass is of questionable validity and that the conciliar popes were considerably different than the preconciliar popes at the very least. I then realized that if they lied frequently enough about these topics, someone would catch on. So there were certain controversial questions touching on tradition that they would avoid with a 10-foot pole. You can’t get in trouble if you don’t say anything. Isn’t this the tactic of sodomite bishops and priests? The fact that the EWTN experts were afraid to answer certain types of questions became very obvious to me.
It became obvious to me that EWTN - this so-called beacon of orthodoxy - had something to hide regarding the state of the Church from the faithful. But why? The only deduction had to be because they were mindless robots of the new order hierarchy as much as I was. That is why. Surely they would not lie on purpose. There is humility and humble obedience and then there is down right stupidity, plain and simple. Unfortunately, the new order conservative types have opted for the latter.
So John and I started corresponding in e-mails; my intent, apart from coming to a deeper understanding of reality, was to pick his brain so I could better understand the confusion. I chose him not just because he obviously had a much firmer grasp of the situation and the truer grasp of the Faith than I or the EWTN experts ever did, but also to get him “back on track” because I thought perhaps he was one of those schismatic disobedient "Trad types." You know the "type": The sort that is too critical of the pope, the new mass and Vatican II; the kind I can sympathize with but the type of person that nobody, not even an “ultra-conservative” like Cardinal Ratzinger can please. You know the category of people of which I speak, where everything the pope does or says is wrong and it is all Vatican II’s fault; those knee-jerk reactionaries with their misguided anger scandalizing all the “loyal” faithful. That is who I thought I was dealing with in John Galvin and I was hoping to “straighten him out” by giving him a good hearing and acknowledging the valid points he made, while raising any objections to his responses. I had done this time and time again with protestants on various aspects of the faith and they could never logically refute me, This gave me the confidence to go at it with traditionalists, particularly Sede Vacantists, as well as those who went to those “unapproved” Masses whether SV or not in the past. In my brashness and zeal, I felt that they, too, did not seem to have the time, patience, or knowledge to soundly refute me either, but John did.
John took each and every objection I had as well as objections from friends far more knowledgeable than I on the topics of Vatican II, the new mass and the popes. I might point out here that John never claimed to be a Sede Vacantist; likewise he never claimed not to be Sede Vacantist either. At the time, I thought his comments were his over reaction to the crisis within the Church and he turned it on its head. I would take his responses and share them with conservative/traditional friends I had, and asked them what they thought. They would say he was wrong, but never could they adequately explain why. It was the EWTN expert dilemma all over again. If he was so wrong, why couldn't anyone prove it? Having convinced me that Vatican II was a big part of the problem, I re-read the Vatican II docuмents. I did so the second time very carefully; not with a drone-like automatic pre-conceived acceptance of everything they say must be true because it is infallible type thinking, but with a critical study-like attitude that compared it with the traditional writings I had read in my journey to truth. This was a very interesting process for me, and it was at this time that I wrote my second article, Trick or Treat or Threat, some time before I actually submitted it for publication, for, at this time, I was not even aware of The Daily Catholic website.
It was not too long after my re-reading of the Vatican II docuмents that I was 100% convinced that, yeah, we can definitely lay, at least a partial blame on Vatican II for our dilemma in the Church. I started subscribing to more traditional periodicals like the Remnant and Catholic Family News and read a book and a booklet called, “The Great Façade” and “We Resist You to the Face” respectively and these were a significant part of my conversion process as well as Gamber’s “Reform of the Liturgical Reform”. It was in the first two above mentioned writings that I “learned” that a pope can be resisted and does not have to always be obeyed and this is where I learned in detail of many of the unpopish and unCatholic things JPII said and did and these writings provided the source of the various (“erroneous”) heretical quotes from the above “pontiff” many of which came from encyclicals. I learned about the “State of Emergency” and “Supplied Jurisdiction” and how the faithful have a perpetual right to the true Mass, Priests, Bishops and Sacraments. And I finally became convinced that I could go to that “Independent,” heretofore “schismatic,” Church in my area without putting my soul in peril. Yes, I actually learned this from modern Rome itself. Indeed the Church I attend is independent – not independent from Eternal Rome but independent from the modern heretical Rome that heads the great façade of false Catholicism.
This Mass at that church was the final breakthrough in my conversion to Authentic Roman Catholicism. Sure, I had been to numerous True Masses before, but there was something different about this first Mass at the “bad” Church that I attended on a week day just to see what it was like. From that Mass in October of 2004 onwards, I have never gone - and never will go - to a Novus Ordo again. I used to go every day to the Novus Ordo, up until that day - that day of my epiphany. Not only that, but I will never to go to an “indult” again. Why? That is a good question. At the time I still thought that the “indult” was just as legitimate as the “schismatic” Mass but something in me would not let me go to the “indult” again. Very shortly, after my first True Mass at the “independent” chapel,I caught myself saying, “I will never go to an indult again, even if the Mass at this chapel comes to an end.” The Mass was not much different than the “indult.” It was said a bit more reverently, but I don't think that's what did it for me. In fact, I am not sure what it was about that Mass that abolished the Novus Ordo and “indult” from my life, though the silence and the way the people - particularly the women - dressed, made an impression that even the “indult” could not match, but that was not it either. I cannot put my finger on it but there was something distinctly CATHOLIC about my first True Mass and all the others I have attended since. It was that day, after almost 40 years of wandering in the Novus Ordo desert, after my Baptism, that I became irrevocably, an authentic Roman Catholic again in practice and commitment.
As a post-script I would like to recommend Griff Ruby’s book “The Resurrection of the Catholic Church” as a book that has padded and filled in the gaps pertaining to my knowledge and lack there of in regards to the great eclipse of the Church and how and why the True Church has been forced underground once again. I also recommend “Denzinger” and “The Council of Trent” books for those who take the eternal destination of their soul seriously. As one who has taken the journey, I continue on it, determined to know my Faith as well as I can so that I can help others find the same wonderful conclusion I have on their own journey to Truth.
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Given the fact that my theological position is neither SSPX nor sedevacantist, and that many if not mos here don't consider me a trad at all, I don't have much to contribute. This has been a fascinating thread, though, and I have rally enjoyed reading it
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Last Part of my story:
A while back I shared my conversion story on this site and here I should like to give the rest of the story with the hope of encouraging others who have taken the first step of taking their blinders off but are just now realizing that what they thought was a ship they were on that was to safely guide them to salvation is a mere veneer though the dangers of the ocean quite real while solidifying my case for becoming a true Catholic loyal to the authentic Magisterium and the Papacy established in perpetuity by Christ with the rest of the background of my conversion.
I hesitate to share the few mystical experiences I have had in my life because it appears to be self-aggrandizing and can be a turn-off to some readers as stories of mystical experiences tends to appeal more to emotion than to logic but I feel I ought not omit these experiences due to what happened to me spiritually when my conversion to Catholicism became complete.
As my somewhat inconsistent fish, ocean, ship “analogy” will show I write acknowledging my intellectual inadequacy for the task. My intelligence and capacity for learning is somewhat limited though my hunger for truth is less limited. I share this because being a member of the Holy Name Society I can see that I am quite probably the least intellectually gifted of the twenty or thirty-some odd members of that group. And this is the norm regarding the traditional people I have encountered generally speaking. The traditionalists, whether converts or not, tend to be rather knowledgeable, not just in regards to their faith but in regards to everything, they are smart, they think things through, and they don’t make life-altering changes or play with the state of their soul on a whim. I have never undervalued the benefit of surrounding myself with those more advanced than I so I could better myself. In the Novus Ordo I was a confused, disheartened and unsatisfied whale in a pool 40 feet wide with no depth (apart from that bottomless pit of chaos, contradiction and ambiguity in the center) whereas in the Catholic Church I am a minnow – and a rather happy, satisfied and fulfilled minnow (as opposed to a man without a boat stuck in the middle of the ocean of apostasy that we all find ourselves in) at that in an ocean 2000 miles wide and of infinite depth.
For as in the beginning of Church history the Church currently is not as strong exteriorly or visibly as she was during the Middle Ages or even just before the council for that matter. The waves are rocking higher and with more frequency than they ever have before and that scourged and battered ship or ark that Christ built to take us to safety is harder to find than it ever was before but whence she is found you will have the capacity to navigate through this ocean of peril amongst the other saintly navigators whether your knowledge of the faith is whale-sized or that of a mere minnow you will be home, where you belong as opposed to a fish out of water as I hope to prove in this article.
I say this knowing that I am about to elaborate on some experiences that do not appeal so much to the intellect, and when seeking truth, regarding the Catholic faith, I looked to the facts, logic, sound reason, the Church Fathers and friends and experts that were much more acquainted with Catholicism and reality than I was at the time. I was not concerned about any sort of mystical experience of others that influenced their thinking, such as “I was sitting in this Church and I just knew I needed to convert to the faith of that Church” or “I felt the Spirit there” or “It was Spirit filled” – these types of sentiments just does not do it for me. I do not discount the legitimacy of such things being possible, but I prefer to trudge upon the sure ground of factual docuмentation found in the Sacred Tradition (a Sacred Tradition whose body encompasses and is what gave us the Sacred Scripture we have today) of the Church Christ died to give us during any sort of transition period and maturation process dealing with the fate of my soul.
In my Journey to Truth article I mentioned in passing my feeling like I was floating after my first Confession – this was in 1972 - so the priest as well as the Sacrament were likely to be valid. I still remember that moment as if it were today. When I came out of the Confessional I felt like I was floating and asked the others when they came out if they felt like they were floating as well. They said yes, but I am not sure if this was true for they did not seem as enthused as I should think one should be should such an occurrence have befallen them.
Keep in mind that those to whom God does grant spiritual favors often-times are not necessarily holy or deserving but rather they need help because they might not make it were it not for these tangibly extraordinary supernatural experiences; for what might have become of Saint Paul had he not been knocked of his high horse? Hence when considering how the True Mass and Sacraments - the ordinary means of union with God – are no longer available in anywhere close to the degree that they were before the great Apostasy unleashed by Vatican II and predicted by Christ, Saint Paul and our Lady, we conclude that during extraordinary times God tends to act in extraordinary ways in that those who would be His people do not have the ordinary means of the true Mass and Sacraments available to them. I do not claim to have humility though I know humility is the most fertile ground for truth to be planted but I do know that God will work with you (as He worked with the Jєωs who remained faithful during the exile) regardless of the state of His Church so long as you are sincere; and sincerity is one virtue I can safely claim as my own. I want the truth and will go wherever it leads and I refuse to turn a blind eye to it once I see it leading where I did not expect it to lead. I say it now and I will say it again; the truth really sets you free. Free from heresy and apostasy.
I know for a fact that at the time of my first Confession I was not holy, I was as bad as humanly possible for someone that age and I would only get worse as the years progressed as we will see later. For before that Confession we used to play a game during our Catholic School recess whose main purpose was to throw rocks at one another and there was a particular instance where I was rather successful to the point of knocking a fellow 1st or second grader out. This was one of the sins I confessed at my first Sacrament of Penance and I later considered the possibility that the reason why I felt like I was floating after my first Confession was because I had so many sins that were forgiven over perhaps a period of years. I may not have been so bright but that does not discount the possibility of my having reached the age of reason at an incredibly young age (thus giving my sins time to accuмulate). :o)
What I now candidly share about my past life I hope emphasizes the supernatural graces bestowed upon the soul of one who attends the true Mass (for as you will see - the “indult” did not transform my soul as did the true Mass) rather than undermine my credibility. Some great sinners have become great saints and while I do not claim to be a saint I do claim to have been given the grace to see AND EMBRACE the truth, whole and entire. So while I do not mind sacrificing my reputation for the cause of truth though I do mind the truth being weakened due to the past life of the one who presents it.
But I mention this first mystical experience (I do not even like using the term publicly in regards to myself) to set the stage for my final experience (at least to date) and that would be my most significant experience - the elimination of my Achilles heal, though if one is fortunate enough to have this happen in their life-time they must be all the more on guard for a new Achilles heal to appear, most likely under the guise of pride. As my boyhood mischievousness progressed to adolescent degeneracy I began to experiment more and more with drugs. As a very young child my grandparents used to give me wine or beer with dinner and a very strong drink called a “Hot Toddy” when I was sick. I do not say this to pass blame for they loved me very much as I did them but perhaps to warn current and future parents and grandparents not to feel compelled to do such things as “harmless” as they may seem.
I took up unsupervised drinking at the age of thirteen, as I was taught by the actions of those I looked up to and who were responsible for me that there is nothing wrong with drinking anyway and I also took up smoking as I thought it looked neat when I saw my mother doing it. Personally, drinking did not become a big deal with me as I later proved to myself that I was not an alcoholic though alcoholism ran in the family. It was the cigarettes that I had the hardest time quitting in regards to chemical usage.
Well my drinking, smoking and brief flirtation with tobacco chewing evolved into occasional marijuana use which also began at lucky thirteen. I had also started a bad personal habit that would prove to be more difficult to quit than anything else I ever did in my life by far.
To make this long story shorter we’ll just say that I eventually progressed to cocaine, PSP, LCD and whatever pill I could find, not really caring what it did, I would pop first and ask questions later (Oh, I’ll be incapacitated for the next twelve hours? Cool!). It eventually got to the point where my typical day and week included smoking marijuana and drinking every day several times a day, snorting coke every Saturday and dosing on LCD every Friday and Sunday night, but I was sure to go to Church AND Communion on Sunday’s or Saturday evenings. And I would make it to work and school and perform adequately in my obligatory functions in those varying altered states.
To recap I had started marijuana and alcohol in 1979. Advanced to cocaine by 1983 and graduated to LSD or “Acid” by 1984 the same year I graduated from high school. I mention these years because in my Journey to Truth article I mention the year 1986 as being when I first started wearing the brown scapular, and perhaps you can see now why I did not recall why I started wearing it – at that time in my life I pretty much lacked the capacity to recall anything.
But by “coincidence” it was not long after I started wearing the scapular in 1986 that I stopped taking acid. I did not try to quit as I did with cigarettes before, I just stopped taking it. There were times when I would “trip” - that is what you do on acid - and I would start the night with my scapular on and the next morning it would have disappeared (this only happened when I took acid). I knew enough about the scapular at that time to know that that was not a good sign. To this day I do not know exactly what motivated me to quit LSD but I stopped and did not crave it after I quit. Not to long after that - by 1988/89 - I had quit cocaine; being ripped off $200 helped lead me to that conclusion. But again, I never craved it after I quit. All the while I would try and fail quitting cigarettes. In my mind - partially from a physical health outlook and partially from a satisfaction point of view - cigarettes were the logical thing to quit if I were to quit anything because they are much more dangerous in regards to cancer than marijuana and a lot less satisfying from a buzz perspective than anything and they don’t taste good, they are pointless from a logical perspective but I still could not quit them.
So now I am left with marijuana, cigarettes, alcohol, my personal sin, and half a brain (I had started and finished smoking crack cocaine briefly by this point and was not the least bit addicted when I stopped using it – again I just lost the desire for it – though I enjoyed using it – the recollection of my using and quitting (losing the desire for) it came as a mere afterthought when writing this article) but low and behold I start losing the desire for marijuana and I stop buying it and only smoke it when offered and even then I would only take a hit or two until I felt a slight buzz. By this time I was rather aware that our Lady had something to do with this; for from what I have heard, drugs like cocaine and marijuana are addictive, especially cocaine. I gave credit to our Lady and her scapular for giving me the grace to lose the desire for these addictive drugs without needing rehab or anything. To this day I believe that my quitting all these drugs without making a conscious effort or planning to do so and my not being dead and in Hell is a miracle.
Left with just alcohol and cigarettes I decided on my own (I say ‘my own’ because I am convinced that our Lady was responsible for my quitting LSD, cocaine and marijuana as alcohol and cigarettes were things that I made a conscious effort to quite on my own as opposed to just losing the desire for it – I’m sure our Lady and ultimately God is responsible for giving me the ability to cooperate with the grace He made available to me when it came to quitting cigarettes and alcohol as well) a date to quit and that would be on my birthday, September 8th 1990 or 1991 and so I did - cigarettes for ever and alcohol for one year. And since that time, apart from a few early exceptions I have not gotten drunk again and rarely take a drink at all unless I am out at a good restaurant for dinner – which is rare, and then I only have one or two at the most.
But I still had that one personal problem, that objectively mortal sin that can damn a man to Hell problem.
In January of 1993, becoming a good neo-catholic and all I decided to quit that personal problem for good and I was successful for one year until January of 1994 when the Dolphins beat the Chiefs in the playoffs and my mother gave me a bottle of champagne to celebrate, I committed my deed before I went to sleep and the demon having moved out returned with seven more stronger than himself and I was a dead man spiritually speaking yet again.
By this time I had “got religion” as I rightly attributed my being alive to our Lady and her brown scapular. So due to my lack of luck with women and my comparative “holiness” I figured I must be called to the religious life.
So I tried my hand with the Carmelites in DC. I learned a lot from them. I learned that the Rosary is a crutch, that our lady was “dethroned” by Vatican II as mediatrix of all grace, that contraception is not necessarily a sin if you do not think it is and it is not necessarily a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday’s even if your missing Mass is not due to sickness or travel. These “teachings” were not a course in technical theology regarding subjective culpability but a downplaying and a reducing of unchangeable authentic Church teaching.
Despite all that I was still considering joining them as I sat in front of the “Blessed Sacrament?” and a statue of our Lady praying for five hours when I heard a soft, gentle, lady’s voice repeat one word twice; “wait”.
I must admit going into that five-hour prayerathon I was hoping to get an answer to the question “should I join the Carmelite’s or not?”, “yes” or “no”. My answer was “wait”. And so I did thanks be to God and His most holy mother Mary. It was this same year of 1994 that I had another experience even more memorable than that soft gentle voice that kept me from permanently ruining my life and that was in October when I had an overwhelming sense of peace that started while I was at work and lasted for days which eventually and imperceptively disappeared having permanently assured me beyond any doubt that there is a God and this spiritual favor or foretaste of Heaven would ever strengthen my faith, preparing me for future trials and giving me the foundation to endure them. This was an indescribable favor from God that you have to experience to understand.
I “waited”, as the voice requested, for two years when I became interested in the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Boston because of their “loyalty to the ‘magisterium’”, “devotion to our Lady” and their “Eucharistic centeredness”. You can’t go wrong with those three guiding the way so long as they are authentic. Well I came to find out that I was not fit for the religious life because I had been for my whole life and was currently being mentally abused and I “needed to get in a healthy long-term romantic relationship” before I could be considered by them.
This was interesting, I was always attracted to women but they seemed not to be attracted to me, this was the case both as a bad boy and as a good boy, as a bad boy and good boy I was always a good friend but hardly ever a lover, at least not for an extended period of time. I was a druggy sure enough but that did not qualify, you see, you had to be the type of druggy that showed his “love” by yelling and slapping you around in order to be long-term boyfriend material and this was not the stuff of which I was made. In fact it was because of a broken heart that I turned to LSD, for I was mad at God, because I tried to do it “His way” (I really thought this in my mind at the time - 1984) by being a “nice guy” and He would not give me what I wanted so I did it my way – the heck with it all, I’m gonna have my fun, if it not be with women it will be with drugs. And fun I had; a superficial fun at the cost of my brain, health and almost my immortal soul but fun nonetheless.
By 1997 I had tried the diocesan Priesthood (having been clean for 7 years but still with that personal problem) but by that point I was disturbed with the idea of having to distribute Communion in the hand and having to allow lay people to distribute it and do the readings. At this point I was still a blind fool but I had enough common sense to know that these abuses in the liturgy were not right.
By 1998 I had become a more “traditional” Catholic and I ventured up to Scranton PA to try my hand with the Society of Saint John. I was told that they offered the Tridentine Mass and were obligated to pray the Rosary every day which was rather refreshing when compared to the Carmelites who claimed praying the Rosary was a crutch. They ultimately did not accept me because of my lack of education – High school graduate – though they said they would consider me if I went to Thomas Aquinas College in California. But I would not accept them because I came to find out that they tinkered with the Mass and that they played sex games with adolescent boys.
By 1999 I decided it was time for another ultimatum for God; this time it was not the “give me a woman or give me LSD” ultimatum but a “If I do not get accepted by an order this year that is it – no more religious order search.” So I went on retreat with the Fraternity of Saint Peter and applied with EWTN “that bastion of orthodoxy” I talked about in the other article on my conversion.
At this time in my life I was a conservative “Catholic” with traditional like tendencies so I decided I would join which ever order accepted me first and that order would be EWTN who gave me their yes one week before the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter accepted me. In retrospect I came to see that this was in God’s plan as well, for if I had joined the Fraternity I may have never left them though I would have immediately become INCREDIBLY disappointed when they would soon be forced by Rome to say the new “mass” because I would have gone in “knowing” that we would only be saying the Tridentine “indult” Mass.
By this time I had read the Book, “The Reform of the Liturgical Reform” by Monsignor Klaus Gamber and had some idea about what was going on with the liturgy.
I was pleased that EWTN’s “Mass” was “ad orientum” or “verses Deum” i.e. facing liturgical East or towards God and said in Latin - the language of the Church.
It was but two months after I joined (my personal problem problematically persisting) that their “bishop” a 70-year-old man said the “innovation” of having your back to the people would not be tolerated in his diocese if that mass was being televised.
“Innovation”?!!! What!??? The man was 70-years-old in 1999, born in 1929 and he claims that the priest facing the same direction as the people face during mass is an “innovation”?!
Well I ultimately left that order after a four month stay for the above mentioned as well as other reasons being fully convinced, after praying many hours a day, every day, so as to be sure I made the right decision that I was not to be a religious.
This was kind of a relief, for I could tell any potential wife that yes, definitely I am not considering the religious life. This had gotten in the way of at least one person before. The truth really does set you free. In this case it set me free from possibly marrying a spoiled Novus Ordo woman and quite possibly from being stuck in the Novus Ordo for the rest of my life. Plus I had proven to God (Actually He already knew) but I proved to myself as Abraham proved to himself that he was willing to give everything up for God. And that I did. I gave up a great job with great benefits that was within walking distance from my home and Church, most of my material possessions and my financial security.
So I entered the new millennium, a conservative “Catholic” with Traditional leanings, in love with the “pope” and convinced that the problems within the Church had nothing at all to do with him.
The rest of my story is in the other article on my conversion except for what is for me a key affirmation of the legitimacy of my conversion and one of the more significant points I make in this article.
You see during the time elaborated upon in that article but after I started attending the true Mass at and “independent” Church I had learned that the “indult” is a part of that heretical new order Church, said by new order “Priests”, “the Mass of John XXIII” which is significantly different than the one Christ – Saint Pius V through Pope Pius XII left us. For the John XXIII “indult” Mass is the beginning of the “Great Compromise” that led to the desolation of the faith in the true Church Temple turned into SINagogues. Indeed apart from cutting beautiful parts of the Mass out he also added Saint Joseph’s name to the heretofore unchangeable canon (4th century on) of the Mass adding to the canon of saints who died (were martyrs) for the true Mass and the Eucharist a saint who died well before the Mass was even established – you see, the Church did not forget about Saint Joseph by not putting him in the canon, they merely handed on what they were given - the cuмulative additions of saints who died for the Mass - for such is fitting and more importantly - Divinely inspired – had these martyrs listed in the canon of the Mass not died for the faith and the Mass, the Mass would have been abolished but this was not a part of God’s plan. Adding a name to the perpetually codified canon some 1600 years later is not divinely inspired. After the persecution of the first 300 years of the Church we had our canon of saints who were martyred during that persecution and they were officially and perpetually codified (not changed nor subtracted from or added to) by St. Pius V in the 1500’s. This should be sufficient reason enough to avoid the indult if you can.
But if that not be the case consider the fact that the “indult” is run by heretic “bishops” invalidly consecrated and offered by new order priests invalidly ordained. But supposing that is too much for you to swallow (because you would have to admit to yourself that you had been blind all these years and besides what would everyone think), consider how the indult priest will distribute hosts “consecrated” at the new “mass” to the people at the “indult”. And a further undeniable fact for those not completely willfully blind and is another benefit of converting to authentic Catholicism and going to a true Catholic Church not linked to modern heretical new Rome through an invalid heretic bishop is that the money, which we are obligated to give to the True Church would go to cover up their sex crimes and be used to bully orthodox “priests” and used to wreckovate Churches and used to protestantize the children in their RCIA classes were it given to a diocesan “indult” Church. Do you really think the new order bishops take the money from the “indult” and use it only for good things while only using the money from the new order service to cover up their crimes? The indult is the “high Church” (more “catholic” looking) within the heretical Novus Ordo Church and should be avoided at all costs.
The fact that I looked FOR YEARS before I leapt from the new order façade into the Catholic Church cannot be denied as I hope my two articles on the subject prove. For you see, I believe, as all true Catholics do, that there is no salvation outside the Church and speaking as on who is of the Sedevacantist opinion I believe that if you separate yourself from Peter you separate yourself from Christ. (And if you unite yourself to a heretic that claims to be Peter? Someone else can answer that.) But I kept coming across these “teachings” from conciliar “popes” that contradicted their predecessors. This happened over and over again. But, in my blindness and naiveté, I would continually accept all the excuses made by conservative “Catholics” for these “blunders”. These excuses would go something like this:
1. He said that? Well it was only intended to be pastoral, not doctrinal.
2. He wrote that in an encyclical? Well it must have been misstranslated.
3. He must have been taken out of context.
4. You probably misunderstand him.
5. Well he taught that only men can be priests so he must have the powers of infallibility that only a Pope can have. (I teach the same thing, does that make me Pope?)
I was finally starting to “get it” and would regurgitate the same excuses to protestants who did not believe in the papacy and would ask why does your pope think that evolution is more than just a theory or why would he worship with heretics and encourage others to worship false gods and why would he apologize on behalf of dead Christians who could not defend themselves or their actions I mean I can apologize to the Jєωs for the things Hitler did but I cannot apologize for Hitler and speaking of Jєωs if your pope is infallible why does he say that the old covenant is not revoked?
I would have to say and I would really mean that – “Well he wasn’t speaking in his official capacity” or one of those excuses I mentioned earlier or he didn’t stand on his head and click his heels three times so it did not count as being infallible and so we can’t accuse him of being a heretic or of not being infallible. And if we could prove he was a heretic based on his repeated teaching of heresy and engaging in heretical acts well that would not mean anything either unless the Church said so, I never made this last claim or even thought to say it but that was what I was eventually told (not the clicking of the heels part) shortly after my transition to Catholicism (when I speak of my transition or conversion to Catholicism I am speaking of the year 2004) when I brought up some of these questions regarding all these errors by the “pope”. I would make most of these excuses in all sincerity thinking perhaps there was a better (legitimate) excuse for all this craziness because the other excuses just were not doing it for me anymore. This is what I believed.
But it was the Mass that made me look realistically at the Papal issue (at the Papacy itself). For by this time I had researched all I could on Vatican II and the Mass and with my penchant for getting to the bottom of things the (pretended?) Papacy was the only thing that was left as being the root cause of the Great Apostasy (apart from Satan himself) within the Church (I mean WHO was responsible for Vatican II and approving the new mass?). This is when I decided that I needed to find better excuses for the “popes” consistently continuous innocuous inadequacy and unpapal-like acts and words than those mentioned above. I knew there had to be an answer and I knew I had not found it yet. I did not even consider sedevacantism as an alternative. But there were no better excuses for the “popes” “indiscretions” than the ones I have listed. Something was wrong, very wrong and no one seemed to notice or care. It just so happened I was visiting my parents in Florida that I went to a True Mass, approved by God and all Catholic Popes (the true Papacy can only be composed of Catholic Popes) that I found a copy of the “The Catholic Voice” periodical edited by Father Kevin Vaillancourt. They did not claim to be Sedevacantist, but boy did that periodical open my eyes and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to brush up on their Catholicism and would like to avoid having the fleeced wool pulled over their eyes once again as some leaders of the SSPX may plan on doing to their loyal faithful.
At this time in addition to being given the excuse regarding any particular heretical statement or official writing by the “pope” in an encyclical that “this heretical teaching was not an ex cathedra infallible statement” I was told regarding a certain heretical act, “well a pope can sin” (true enough, but this engaging in heretical acts and teaching heresy (under the guise of non-infallible teaching) is the rule with ALL the conciliar pontiffs and not the exception, and so we have no other choice but to conclude that something happened in regards to these papal claimants and that something is not good and this cannot be realistically denied. I mean you can have a bad legitimate Pope here and there scattered throughout history but to have an unbroken line of five “popes” that are consistently ambiguous, novel, “bad” “erroneous” heretical in MANY of their official speeches, writings and actions? I mean we are not just talking about sinful personal lives here, or mere weakness and cowardliness but something far worse that has the potential for leading millions of souls into the pit of eternal damnation (this is the Rock Christ built His Church on whose teachings all Catholics must accept and whose disciplines all Catholics must submit and whose laws all Catholics must obey?) due to the one consistent thing about the conciliar pontiffs and that is their outward and blatantly heretical acts and teachings. So the bottom line of the heretical pope excuse making enterprise is pretty much “well it is not official public heresy unless the pope proclaimed it while standing in his head with his eyes shut, his nose plugged and he spins around three times while saying it.” “And even if he does teach heresy under these circuмstances we still can’t claim him to be a heretic until he is officially deposed.”
Let me translate these excuses and “explanations” for you:
1. As a good practicing Catholic that knows your faith and is familiar with the teachings of all the Popes from Peter through Pius XII and knows your catechism you must not take to heart what the conciliar popes do and say and you do not have to obey them if their command contradicts previous Church teaching. Nor should you follow their example when they worship with heretics or distribute Communion to them or kiss the Koran. Anything the pope teaches against the Dogmas and Doctrines of the Church is not heresy but error and we can never call the pope a heretic (because that would mean he was not pope) no matter how heretical he is but we must wait for the (heretical) Church to depose him.
2. As a good practicing Catholic that knows the Faith of the Ages you must accept the fact that a legitimate pope can approve a mass that is 83% different than the Catholic Mass and mess with the consecration formula in his official capacity as “pope” and that a pope can say this new creation exclusively and foist this invention on the Catholic world and change the unchangeable Catholic teachings in their official capacity as “pope” regarding ecuмenism, religious liberty and no salvation outside the Church officially approving the Vatican 2 docuмents in his official capacity as pope complete with their redefinition of the heretofore Catholic Church along with completely new “teachings” that are the complete opposite of what the pre-conciliar popes had clearly taught just a few years before and can say Woodstock masses with hundreds of Eucharistic ministers where numerous hosts are dropped on the muddy ground and trampled upon, over and over again and reign over a Church whose state continues to get worse and worse and do nothing about it while each successor of theirs is proven to be even less Catholic than the previous one and we cannot even have a doubt about the validity of his papacy because that would mean that the “gates of Hell” had “prevailed” against the Church and that can never happen.
3. That is the vast majority don't believe he is a heretic, then we have to accept majority human opinion over divine truth.
4. God would not let us be without a pope for so long - it has never happened before. (Neither has the end times as we know it happened before. Neither has the times of apostasy and eclipse predicted since the time of Christ happened).
By now you get the picture of the feeble defense of conciliarism. In fact, from what I heard of the recent Debate on Sedevacantism a few weeks ago in Spokane, those were the premises of the main arguments Robert Sungenis fell back on which were easy pickings for John Lane. For anyone arguing against sedevacantism to use such flimsy excuses in ignoring the obvious will fall on their own petard everytime.
Okay. So why have a pope in the first place? What is his function? Well enough is enough. I mean how blind do you want me to be? If one looks at the facts one must conclude that when Jesus said, "Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I build My Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it". "It", of course meaning Christ's Own and Only Church But even if Christ meant the gates of Hell would not prevail against the “Rock” (the Papacy) He was speaking of the office of the Papacy and not of all individuals who claimed it. He continued: "I will give thee the keys of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven" (St. Matthew 16: 18-19). He either meant what He said as God or didn’t mean what He said as God (impossible...or was not God but a madman (even more improbable and impossible). Does God bind error, heresy, de-sanctifying disciplines and heretical canon law in Heaven? Of course not. Can a true Petros bind error, heresy, de-sanctifying disciplines and heretical canon law on earth? You know the answer to that. Well if Christ was not God or if He was a liar which would be the case if Christ built His Church on the “firm” “Rock” of instability where non Catholic Heretics are the head of His Catholic Church then I need not have quit everything I quit because the whole thing is a farce and I should live for today because what guarantee do I have of a resurrection? Either He set up a unifying head that is infallibly protected from contradicting itself on faith and morals to the end of time or He set up a unifying head that could contradict itself on essential universal truths where all the contradictions would all have to be 100% correct as taught by Him (Christ Himself through His Church) and all true Catholics must believe all the nonsensical contradictions without reservation.
That would make Christ to be either an idiot or schizophrenic and the same would have to be said of the Holy Ghost Who is supposedly preventing these “popes” from erring in their official capacity. (Yes, the Holy Ghost is guaranteed to protect the pope from merely erring, let alone engaging in and teaching blatant heresy repeatedly in their official capacity as “pope”.) So for now, until I am proven wrong, I will doubt the legitimacy of the conciliar papal claimants rather than think Christ to be an idiot and the Holy Ghost to be a farce. I take seriously my Act of Faith in which every Catholic says, "I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches because Thou hast revealed them Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived." Think about it, my friends. Seriously think about those words.
I cannot emphasize enough that I say all this as one who was led to believe the conciliar “popes” were Catholic, as one who was led to believe that the new Mass was good and certainly valid and as one who sincerely, on the good word of the conservative “experts”, believed that Vatican II just needed to be properly implemented. I believed and defended these positions vehemently as have many of the luminaries of the traditional movement today who may have taken the same path but perhaps different experiences, but all arriving at the same destination in our journey. Like many of them, I had to be thoroughly convinced (not by the “experts” as I was convinced by them before because I was lazy and preferred them to figure it out for me but by the papal docuмents themselves and what the Church truly teaches) that my beliefs regarding Vatican II and the new mass were askew and that my soul would not be in jeopardy before I went to a Mass that I thought “Rome” did not acknowledge. I had to be thoroughly convinced, with facts, with docuмented quotes beyond any reasonable doubt that the conciliar Church is a completely different animal than the Church Christ founded before I would avail myself to the grace of Christ in the only ordinary way possible - through His Sacraments found in His True Church and administered by his validly ordained Priests – not much to ask or difficult to find before the Council. Satan will not prevail but he is making the most of the time he has.
Well to get to the point of the article which I have alluded to throughout - recall how I have repeatedly mentioned the personal problem of self-abuse which I had throughout this 25-year conversion process and how this problem continued right until my first Catholic Mass (in 2004) where I irrevocably renounced the novus-ordo and the indult (a happy minnow freely and securely swimming around with whales in the faith who hunger only after the readily available sanctifying grace found in the Church). From that day onward I have not had the slightest inclination to self-abuse. The overwhelming amount of facts, logic, sound reasoning, Church history, Church doctrine and a pair of eyes that I decided to open got me to that Church and the happy miraculous results which I have the fortune to be benefiting from in a most tangible and life-altering way through the true Mass and Sacraments I had been deprived of in the Novus Ordo façade with their new mass and “indult” merely affirmed the rightness of my decision, which was agonizing until I finally let go of the excuses and grasped on to reality; the reality that “bishops” and “popes” (Satan’s little helpers) slipped one by the goalie (actually the Holy Ghost was not there for there was no pope to preserve from error heading that council) in Vatican II and reinvented the Church which is another way of saying deCatholicized it chasing the true Catholics out and creating a den of thieves where those rejected true Catholics "outside the 'church'" would cry out to anyone who cared to hear of their total commitment to preserve the faith even though they may be a faithful remnant of the Church founded by Christ that will endure until the end of time. And I happily announce, FINALLY being fit for marriage thanks to the True Mass and Sacraments, that the journey I have been on over the last quarter of a century has arrived at an oasis of love where I will no longer be going it alone, but with the one whom God has chosen to accompany me further on this on-going journey. You see, on Saturday, September 9th this year I entered into Holy Wedlock with the former Lorraine Acosta, the love of my life.
And that my friends . . . is the story of my journey thus far, until, gifted by more of the grace of God, I can lead my own family further on this journey on this narrow, but sure path - for now I clearly know where the journey is taking me/us: Heaven. We got married in a true Church (Saint Athanasius in Vienna, Virginia) with a true Nuptial Mass and this was the greatest experience and moment of my life as I was most pleased to see my mother in skirt and veil for the first time in my life. We kept it small with only my mother, father, sister and mother-in-law attending along with the friend who gave the bride away. We had a lovely dinner afterwards. It is the ONLY way to get married. Had I gotten married before my conversion I would have regretted it for the rest of my life unless my wife converted with me. Pray my new bride Lorraine and I will have the grace to persevere and fulfill His holy will in all things as we continue this journey together for His honor and glory.