CathInfo.com

INTERLOCUTOR 1: STAND-ALONE COMMENT: All these questions should be thoroughly and carefully decided on by as large of a representation of the traditional clergy as practical. Though perfect unity is impossible without a Pope, we can certainly try harder to work together. Putting pride aside and using reason, I think there's enough historical resources in Tradition to solve these problems. Each having their own opinion isn't enough, at some point you have to decide what to do and do it. "It's time we make some big decisions" as Bob Ross would often say. If you don't make the big decisions, nothing will happen.

ADDITIONAL THIRD PARTY COMMENT REQUIRING A REPLY: It all sounds weird to my ears.

Why not organize some kind of Traditionalist reunion and try to understand eveybody's point of view and work towards some kind of unity? Why use a complex theology and call it imperfect council?

Plus, Bp. Pierre Roy was ordained in 2011. He has been in clerical duties for 15 years. The Church used to value experience, age and wisdom. Now we have young clerics coming up with novel ideas, and their faithful are all sold on his ideas on a very emotional way. Weird.

Bp. Rodrigo da Silva, Bp. Roy's consecrator and friend was ordained in the Resistance in 2017. Six months later he becomes a Sedevacantist. Less than four years later he becomes a bishop at the age of 36.

See what I mean?

I wish the very best for all involved, but I think that they might be aiming a little too high.


INTERLOCUTOR 2: I think maybe you did not read through the entire website. Both the arguments and the answers to objections are fleshed out there.

1. Your characterization, "some kind of Traditionalist reunion ... to understand everybody's point of view and work towards some kind of unity," is essentially what is being proposed.

2. The website explains the derivation of the term Imperfect Council. "Complex theology" is the bread and butter, the language d'art of the Church. But, in all truth, the principles governing the theology here are anything but complex.

3. The unamsanctam association did not concoct or invent the term "imperfect council." It belongs to the Church and has been discussed by important theologians. Again, the website provides the history and quotations from their discussions. In fact, the discussion of the arguments breaks down what an Imperfect Council is, and when it may be employed. It explains the limits of the powers and the authority of such an assembly, which are directly ordered to the Church getting Herself a Pontiff when a normal election is impeded for some reason. The Imperfect Council is narrowly tailored to address one, and one only problem - the vacancy of the Apostolic Chair. It may not define dogma, or make disciplinary determinations. It may not usurp the authority of the Holy See. It may only commence its proceedings to the end of getting a man on the Chair.   

4. Your assertion that the proposal is novel is not well founded. What is novel is the terrible situation of the Church. What is novel is Vatican II. The association has gone back into the Tradition and the Church's Ecclesiology to look for a possible remedy. They are not making up the principles they espouse. Only someone ignorant of what the Church is and what She teaches would accuse them of such a thing.

Here is the short list of some real novelties:

- Recognize and Resist
- Sedeprivationism
- SSPX/SV-version of supplied jurisdiction

Consider that the Church has been burdened, from the time of the robber council itself, with these three errors. For seventy years, priests, bishops, religious, and laity alike have been subjected to these perverse fables - have been violently forced to swallow them - or else. It has gotten to the point where Catholics of all ranks now have a bad case of ecclesiological amnesia.

What are the fruits of these three novelties? Division, strife, factions, roadblocks, traffic jams, gate locks, sacramental blackmail, personality cults, inhuman cruelties, inhuman ostracizations, theological and ecclesiological errors posing as "the correct position," confusion, desolation, contraction of the Church. And the worst fruit of all - the horrific entrenchment of the novus ordo, such that it seems the wretched earth will never be rid of it.

5. The Rule of St. Benedict - which we may call "charity promulgated" - saith, in Chapter III, entitled Concerning The Calling Of The Brethren To Council, "As often as any special business has to be transacted in the monastery, let the abbot convoke the whole community and himself state what is the matter in hand. And having listened to the counsel of the brethren, let him settle the matter in his own mind and do what seems to him most expedient. And we have thus said that all are to be called to council because it is often to a junior that the Lord reveals what is best."

If you compare the veritable ruin the "senior" traditionalist clergy have made of our Holy Mother the Church, with the love, zeal, and sound principles of their "juniors," who are proposing something both radically different and yet squarely traditional, then you can see the wisdom of St. Benedict in act, right here in 2026.

I have spent well over a year thinking about Bp. Roy's proposals, principles, and assertions. The Scripture passage that comes to mind is from the Book of Daniel. It is none other than the mock trial of St. Susanna, an apt and shining type and symbol of Holy Mother Church in this time of Her Sacred Passion.

Her husband, children, and family members were paralyzed by shock, seeing her fall from such a lofty estate to the dregs of public shame and ignominy. Their shock and gullibility robbed them of any and all initiative to take action on her behalf. All they could do was weep. The elders, judges, and ancients of the people - corrupt and perverse to the core - nevertheless held the people in thrall. No one thought to mistrust them. No one dared to circuмvent their ostensible authority.

How was the problem resolved? The Scripture saith that the Lord heard Susanna's voice. And in this, our time, He has heard the voice of His Church, a much maligned Woman. "And when she was led to be put to death, the Lord raised up the holy spirit of a young boy, whose name was Daniel. And he cried out with a loud voice, "I am clear from the blood of this woman!"

Do you see the parallel? Is it weird? Unthinkable? Novel? Unamsanctam participates the holy spirit of the young Prophet, Daniel, who cries out with a loud voice, "I am clear from the blood of Holy Mother Church!"

6. Has it occurred to you that the Traditionalist Clerical Old Guard has deliberately, at least in the de facto sense of motive and intention, over the course of the last seventy years, made it almost impossible for the Church to recover? Has it occurred to you that, by the grace and help of God, a couple of young men with more genuinely traditional principles slipped through the cracks; and are now doing the works of God on behalf of the Woman?

You have brought up Bp. da Silva here and in another thread. Do not forget that he is the Bishop who consecrated McGuire of SGG. If he was good enough for that goose, then I suppose he's good enough for the Roy and Altamira ganders. But let's be frank, he's not the man fronting the initiative. No doubt, it is Bp. Roy. Even before I knew who Roy was, I knew that he slipped through the cracks, and therefore was very likely God's choice of a Bishop.

I think you are an honest man, and a man of good will. Let us unite in a prayer intention that cannot go wrong. Let us pray the prayer of Gamaliel. "Dear Lord, is this is from Thee, prosper it! And if it is not from Thee, quell it! For nothing can succeed if it be not of Thee."