I begin by noting the speaker's smarmy smugness. It was hard to listen to him. I listened up till his rehearsal of the traditional Traditionalist folk legend- or slander- against Pope Saint Liberius. That was about four minutes. So I feel that I stomached enough and suffered enough and have the right to complain.

The sedevacantists are PROUD? Proud  because they do what Archbishop Lefebvre was at times on the verge of doing and what he preached as a strong possibility for himself? That's the MAIN problem? This accusation is stupid. This is just being a petty and ignoble sedeplenist party liner who knows how to manipulate people and inculcate in them a false conscience.

Someone who presupposes that the so-called pope is an enemy of souls who teaches a false religion and imposes sacrilegious sacraments who had a little class and honesty would speak sympathetically about sedevacantists' desperation and their jumping the gun relative to His Lordship, who  died straddling the fence. He would not make the blase pronouncement that what you have with sedevacantists first and foremost is the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. (Into which temptation Archbishop Lefebvre more than anyone else on earth led them.)

Sedevacantists do not judge the pope. How could we? There is no pope to judge. Obviously.

Begging questions works both ways.

Having certitude that a so-called pope could not be a pope because of his heresies on the basis of right reason and Papal Magisterial tradition and Canon Law and Scripture and words to the wise from various great Doctors is judging an ecclesiastical situation and making the appropriate deductions. It is no more "judging" than what this speaker proposes about judging that a pope is subject to resistance because of his offenses against the Faith on the basis of the same Catholic sources. But if anyone IS judging the pope -on his own terms- it is the sedeplenist Trad who calls him Holy Father one day and Antichrist the next in the best tradition of Archbishop Lefebvre.

He doesn't like it that Seddies are certain. Well, atheists and Modernists don't like it that orthodox believers are so certain. This man should be instructed that it is considered a sin against the Holy Spirit to be envious of another's spiritual good. The spiritual good of sedevacantists is certitude about their position, a certitude that is simply a function of the philosophical and theological correctness of their position. Are Pontiff Recognizing But Resisting Trads supposed to have certitude about the rightness of their dismissal of a Roman Pontiff's sacraments and Saints and Bibles and bishops and Theologies of the Body and Jєωιѕн/Catholic relations and overall New Pentecosts?

Another consideration is that there are sedevacantists and there are sedevacantists. They fight like cats and dogs as much as sedeplenist Traddies do. The "winners" tend to be the SSPX-friendly Seddies who can't bow low enough when a censorious sedeplenist know-it-all takes exception to his certitude about the vacancy of St Peter's Throne. It's ironic. He is dissing them for their supposed Pride and I have to defend them against that charge thinking that most Seddies could well be accused of False Humility in their pathetic efforts to prove to the mainline Traddies that they aren't SO far-out!

I'll grant that a few Seddies sometimes speak as though their theological case came out of the Catechism of Trent or was the Third Fatima Secret revealed. But in the main, sedevacantists on line and in the chapels speak with due modesty and sophisticated awareness of the limitations of past theological and canonical supports when it comes to dotting all the sedevacantist I's. (Not being able to account very well for one whole Vatican II pope- the first one- is a BIG embarrassment.) This is why my blood started to do a San Gennaro number when I heard this speaker blithely label them as Proud.

There is not too much I have ever liked about most of the sedevacantists whom I have known, but the one thing that they are not is Proud in the way this man suggests. They are just Catholics. And they are just smart and logical and reflective.

His Catholic logic dictates to him that the Pope is the Antichrist and a false teacher and an overall bad apple religiously speaking, but that he is still the Pope because, well, you got to have a Pope.

Their Catholic logic dictates to them that a notorious heretic cannot be the head of the Church of which he is not a member.

The Catholic who is simply as loving and docile towards Benedict XVI as Pius X expected Catholics to be towards him might well fail to see a difference as to "pride"- he might see the sedevacantist as LESS proud, because he is not at all PATRONIZING towards a Modernist "mental case" whom he nonetheless deems Vicar of Christ.

I have yet to hear from a sedeplenist Traditionalist who found a HUMBLE way to say that the Vicar of Jesus Christ Almighty is too demented to be taken seriously as a heretic, though he might well be taken seriously as the Antichrist.

The speaker's crass ignorance about the Pope Liberius unpleasantness may be as common as holy water in Traditionalist circles. That does not make it right. Or acceptable. The truth is that the facts about Pope Liberius are obscure. The texts are sketchy and contradictory. Something is up with it all. No one can say what. Justice, charity, and piety demand that the scale tip in favor of the sainted pontiff's good name.

It may well be that there was no "fall" on the part of the sainted pontiff at all. I tend to think in this case that there is a small fire where there is so much smoke. I think that the worthy patriarch may have said or done something unfortunate under pressure, somewhat like Honorius later, who was just dumb. But teaching heresy about the Divinity of Jesus and excommunicating the Traditional St Athanasius? NO ONE except a sedeplenist Traddie fanatic comes out with malarkey like that. And St Athanasius NOWHERE uses the words that this speaker puts in his mouth.

If we have to play Bad Pope cards in our fun game of Seddie No Pope Vs Traddie Bad Pope Slap Jack, let's stick to Honorius. He is the ONLY Bad Pope card to be found up anyone's sleeve. He alone is the wild card. He alone is the Joker. Alexander VI? He was not Bad in a way we need think twice about.  Maybe his dinner guests just had a bad habit of dropping dead of acute appendicitis all the time.

As for the "vice" of certitude...

"If I should say that I do not know Him, I should be like unto a you, a liar. But I do know Him. And I keep His word."

Such pride. Such certitude.

Let's not be impressed by deceitful and unjust party advocacy that dares to present itself as pastoral care. Let's not be manipulated by theologically queasy ideologues who get us all fired up against Antichrist's Rome one day and then rebuke us at whim, when the wind changes, for daring in our bestial lay ignorance to have any opinions at all about the Holy Father's deeds and words.

Let's have SOME pride. Not ALL pride is bad.

I have not listened to it yet, obscurus, but can you tell me who Fr. Perez is?  I have not heard the name before.  Thanks.

Fr Perez is the pastor of the independent chapel Our Lady Help of Christians in Garden Grove, Ca.

As an aside, what do these 'independents' think justifies their existence in this post-'TLM Motu' age?

1.  Mahonyville
2.  The Novus Ordo
etc.

Quote from: gladius_veritatis

I have not listened to it yet, obscurus, but can you tell me who Fr. Perez is?  I have not heard the name before.  Thanks.

Fr Perez is the pastor of the independent chapel Our Lady Help of Christians in Garden Grove, Ca.

That's correct. He was also ordained by Cardinal Stickler using the Traditional rite of Ordination and was a member of the Institute of Christ the King for some time (I am not sure for how long).

I found it fascinating.

May I ask what, specifically, you found "fascinating"?

Gladius,
    I should not have said "fascinating" at all...mea culpa. I agree there have been better points made arguing against sedevacantism on FE. Fr. Perez did not really provide a doctrinal rebuttal of sedevacantism but instead took a psychological approach.

His treatment of the Arian Crisis was unfortunately laden with error. As you said, the Church has never said that Liberius fell into the Arian heresy. I was surprised to find this misrepresentation of Church history.

I heard Perez saying rest of the Catholic church are wrong.