If Pope Michael pronounced a dogma, on what basis would you reject a solemn definition from the Magisterium?
Irrelevant. You ignored the point. Would such a person be justified in rejecting the anti-popes acts after he knew his election to be invalid and therefore wouldn't need to evaluate any magisterial act? Yes or no.

Exactly.  We have to use our own private judgment to determine that "Pope" Michael is the true pope of the Catholic Church or not.  No one else can do that for us.  In the case of Michael, it was pretty easy.  But the Novus Ordo claimants were a little less obvious.

I agree. Then we come to the next question which is necessitated by that conclusion: why believe in the magisterium at all if the individual is able, indeed must, ascertain what ought to be believed?

Here I do not mean the question juridically, governmentally, or by way of divine imposition, but epistemologically.

The deposit of the faith is received.  Christ gave it to the Apostles.  The Apostles passed it on to their successors.  It's a grace of God to be given the gift of Catholic faith and we only know what we ought to believe because the Church has taught us.  So it's not a matter of ascertaining what we ought to believe so much as it is who we ought to believe.  The Apostles and disciples believed Christ.  The successors of the Apostles believed the Apostles and so on.  We believe the successors of the Apostles.  The sheep know the voice of their Shepherd.  We have received the Holy Ghost.

None of this matters.  Either the Conciliar Church is the Catholic Church or it's not. 

If it's not, the reason that it could happen to come into existece is not necessary for us to discern, nor are we in a position to definitivel solve those questions.  Whether these popes have been heretics, illegitimately elected, closet transgenders, drugged, blackmailed, replaced by doubles, whether they're no popes or partial popes (material but not formal) or impounded popes ... we don't have smoking gun proof, either historical/factual or theological for one of these explanations over another.  So this is an academic debate.

If the Concilair Church is the Catholic Church, we need to return to submission to the Catholic hierarchy, because there's no salvation without submission to the Vicar of Christ.

Catholics do not sift the Magisterium.  Catholics do not sift popes.  Those are illegitimate exercises of private judgment.

Catholics can, however, recognize that "this is not the True Church founded by Christ, since it lacks the Marks of that Church" and refuse submission.  These are the motives of credibility antecedent to the assent and submission of faith, and the place where there is a legitimate exercise of reason (as taught by Vatican I).

Agreed.

Thanks for this, but I don’t think it resolves the issue at hand.

Please allow me to restate the initial concern in different terms (not a syllogism):

1. The individual must determine who ought to be believed based on apostolic succession.

2. The authority (or authorities) believed in must then be obeyed because he (or they) has (have) the authority to decide what belongs to the deposit of Faith and what pertains to it such as interpretation.

3. Said authority, materially, and in succession, is the universally identifiable apparatus known as the Roman Catholic Church, which we Traditionalists reject as being, in fact, a conciliar fraud.

4. The latter conclusion is reached by the examination of teachings, and not authority, per se. In other words, if John XXIII and Paul VI had been orthodox, there would, likely, have been no questions on the matter of their elections. But their elections became disputed, not due to an intrinsic fault in the elections themselves, but due to the teachings which they taught by their authority.

5. Yet, this is the same authority, at least apparently, which we obeyed prior to the conciliar reforms.

6. Therefore our individual judgement pertains to both ascertaining authority as well as beliefs otherwise there would be no Traditional movement at all and no disputations even within the Traditional movement.

Why do you think we are ascertaining beliefs?  We just simply accept what was taught by the Church.  We don't try to figure it out on our own.  If you mean that we have to determine whether or not a theologian's writings conform to Church teaching, that was always the case.  An imprimater and nihil obstat doesn't make a book infallible.  It just means that a Church official has read the book and determined (not infallibly) that it doesn't contain any error.  And that is usually good enough.  But theologians have always argued back and forth on various issues.  But no one can deny any dogma nor assert that there is error in Sacred Scripture.  So we are not ascertaining what we ought to believe.  We just accept whatever the Church has taught us. Also, I should point out that I don't think we are permitted to reject the teaching of the theologians without cause.  We are actually bound to believe on pain of sin some things that are not necessarily infallible.  We would have to show that a teaching doesn't conform to some divinely revealed truth.  But neither are we bound to believe everything written by theologians.  It all depends on the theological notes associated with the teaching.  Some things we are bound to believe even when they are not infallible dogmas.

Why do you think we are ascertaining beliefs?  We just simply accept what was taught by the Church.  We don't try to figure it out on our own.  If you mean that we have to determine whether or not a theologian's writings conform to Church teaching, that was always the case.  An imprimater and nihil obstat doesn't make a book infallible.  It just means that a Church official has read the book and determined (not infallibly) that it doesn't contain any error.  And that is usually good enough.  But theologians have always argued back and forth on various issues.  But no one can deny any dogma nor assert that there is error in Sacred Scripture.  So we are not ascertaining what we ought to believe.  We just accept whatever the Church has taught us.

Ah, but therein lies the very crux of the issue. Perhaps a historical example or two ought to demonstrate the paradox we are in.

Vatican I was rejected by the Old Catholics because they thought that Papal infallibility contradicted what the Church always taught about the nature of the Papacy. Likewise and in the same spirit, Savonarola declared Alexander VI a heretical imposter who may never had the Papacy to begin with because his Renaissance magisterial spirit was deemed to have contradicted prior Church beliefs and teachings and he likewise declared many of those in communion with him as heretics. There are many other examples which may be provided, some of which Cajetan wrote about in his ecclesiological writings when discussing UPA.

The point here is that, ultimately, we are also determining what the Church has taught, its interpretation and application thereof while instrumentalizing that knowledge in our judgements of our current situation.

This is not a new issue. Pope Leo XIII succinctly stated it when he said: “It is also a proof of insincere submission to establish an opposition between one Supreme Pontiff and another Supreme Pontiff. Those who, between two different directions, reject the present one and stick to the past do not show obedience to the authority, which has the right and duty to direct them. In some respects, they resemble those who, after a condemnation, would like to appeal to a future council or a better informed pope.”

In terms of rejecting the very authority which imposes a doctrine which is believed to be in contradiction with what the Church previously believed, Pius IX declared of the Old Catholics:

“Incredibly, they boldly affirm that the Roman Pontiff and all the bishops, the priests and the people conjoined with him in the unity of faith and communion fell into heresy when they approved and professed the definitions of the Ecuмenical Vatican Council. Therefore they deny also the indefectibility of the Church and blasphemously declare that it has perished throughout the world and that its visible Head and the bishops have erred. They assert the necessity of restoring a legitimate episcopacy in the person of their pseudo-bishop, who has entered not by the gate but from elsewhere like a thief or robber and calls the damnation of Christ upon his head.”

Just switch Vatican I with Vatican II, Pius IX with Paul VI, Lefebvre and Thuc with the Old Catholic bishop, Old Catholics with Trads, and voila, you have the Traditionalist movement condemned under the same principles and concepts. Regardless of whether you take the position that the election was null and void in the first place with Paul VI and John XXIII. Some Old Catholics state that Pius IX was a Freemason whose election was never valid to begin with.

It’s a massive issue.

Yes, it really is.  I think about the Old Catholic problem all the time.  If one adheres to Totalism, there's nothing particularly objectionable with what the Old Catholics did.  And I've also caught some proponents of R&R essentially regurgitating point by point the Old Catholic talking points in the Declaration of Utrech.

But notice Pope Pius IX's criterion.  See, he can't appeal to infallibility ... since that's precisely the point of contention.  He appeals to the indefectibility of the Church.

Of this paragraph here, NOT ONE WORD would have to be changed in order for this condemnation to apply to Totalists and R&R.  I have been criticized for calling R&R blasphemous due to denying the Church's indefectibility.  Well, here we have Pope Pius IX making the same argument for which I have been excoriated:
Both R&R and Totalism fall under this condemnation, with the former holding that the Visible Head of the Church and its bishops have erred (so grievously that Catholics must refuse communion with them), and the latter that they have "perished throughout the world".

If you're a Totalist, what exactly would make it wrong for you to have agreed with the Old Catholics and said "Pius IX is a heretic, so he's not the pope"?

That is why I emphasize over and over again that the criterion here for why this is different is that unlike the Church at the time of Vatican I, this Conciliar Church lacks the Marks of the True Church.  Its characteristics (marks or notes) are so different that it would simply be unrecognizable to a St. Pius X if he were to have timewarped from his day into the future.  And it is precisely in ascertaining whether or not an institution has the Marks of the True Church founded by Christ that reason plays a role, where private judgment may be invoked.  We can't Magisterium-sift and we can't Pope-sift.  But we can say that we do not recognize in the Conciliar "Pastor" the Voice of the Shepherd.  Instead, it's a different voice, that of a ravenous wolf destroying the flock while dressed in sheepskin (aka Bergoglio's white cassock).

I agree. Frankly, I don’t see how any ecclesiological proposition other than the Cassiciacuм Thesis can explain the current crisis compellingly.

While the Thesis has some minor issues due to some implications and epistemological limitations, it is by far the best we have.

It is you, Servus, who is missing the boat and bringing up irrelevancies. Perhaps you haven't been following the argument closely. You appear to be arguing with me as if I were opposing the necessity of individual judgment and the obligation upon all Christians pursuant to Galatians 1:8-9 etc., when nothing could be further from the case. In this very thread I have affirmed and supported that necessity - see my post #74 in support of Clemens Maria.

The post that you were attempting to answer was my post #110 in this thread. I was specifically responding to this statement of Hardicanute:

Quote from: Hardicanute on November 05, 2022, 10:00:49 AM
So, the point I am specifically arguing against is not the assertion of a necessity of individual judgment, but the opposite necessity or requirement of abandoning of it.

I have had this discussions with Ladislaus and others here, and the posts of mine I quoted in post #110 are from those discussions. Ladislaus very fortunately reproduced the position in this thread in post #120:


Lad's "motives of credibility antecedent to the assent and submission" is exactly the "at some point" of Hardicanute in this phrase, "at some point the individual needs to yield their own opinion to the authority of the Holy See and submit with complete docility and humility." Indeed, they both use noun and verb forms of the same word, "submission" and "submit."

I am calling foul on the claim and throwing a red flag at it by pointing out that the "motives of credibility" of Lad and the "at some point" of Hardicanute would have clicked in with John XXIII and/or Paul VI, and at that point what remained for them was merely "assent and submission of faith" (Lad) and a "yield(ing) of their own opinion" (Hardicanute) - per their assertion.

Yet, contrary to their assertions, John XXIII and Paul VI were or are neither submitted to nor yielded to, when - according to them - they should have been, the "at some point" at which the "motives of credibility" of a pope elected by those appointed to do so by the Church being established.

Now I suggest my post #110 may make more sense to you.

Yes, it makes more sense to me now. I think my response still stands though although I will formulate it more clearly.

You continually have to evaluate whether the Church that is teaching you is in fact the Catholic Church and not some impostor. Once you have concluded that it is the Church teaching, you accept. If later on, you see that it actually wasn't the Catholic Church, you admit you were wrong and reject its false teaching.

In the end you have to use your judgment somewhere along the line and the farthest back you can go is determining which body is the Catholic Church.

Regarding the notion of Pope-sifting, I'm having a hard time understanding according to which principle it would be illicit, since saints have apparently done it during the Great Western Schism.

Too much for me to think about now.

I would like to thank Hardicanute for starting this thread and Ladislaus for making some good points. I am going to look into the Thesis later.

I'm going to turn into Ladislaus 2.0 ...