Seriously?  There's the core question of which is worse, a 60-year vacancy of the Holy See or ...

Ladislaus a Magisterium and Universal Discipline of the Church that has gone completely off the rails and has been leading souls to hell for 60 years.

It's a grave problem, as +Lefebvre puts it (he himself was perplexed):

ABL: “…a grave problem confronts the conscience and the faith of all Catholics since the beginning of Paul VI’s pontificate: how can a pope who is truly successor of Peter, to whom the assistance of the Holy Ghost has been promised, preside over the most radical and far-reaching destruction of the Church ever known, in so short a time, beyond what any heresiarch has ever achieved? This question must one day be answered…    

But I guess that you've succeeded in solving this problem where +Lefebvre failed.

Archbishop Lefebvre: "It is a request of the litanies of the Saints, right? We ask to keep the Pope in the true religion… We ask that in the Litanies of the Saints! This proves that sometimes it can happen that unfortunately, well, maybe sometimes it happens that... well there have been hesitations, there are false steps, there are errors that are possible. We have too easily believed since Vatican I, that every word that comes from the mouth of the Pope is infallible. That was never said in Vatican I! The Council never said such a thing. Very specific conditions are required for the infallibility; very, very strict conditions. The best proof is that throughout the Council, Pope Paul VI himself said ‘There is nothing in this Council which is under the sign of infallibility’. So, it is clear, he says it himself! He said it explicitly. Then we must not keep this idea which is false, and which a number of Catholics, poorly instructed, poorly taught, believe!" (Retreat at St. Michel en Brenne, April 1, 1989).

Ladislaus “That's the chief fight between R&R and the sedevacantists.  R&R think the former is a worse problem for the Church's indefectibility, while the SVs think that the latter is the worse problem.

Ladislaus But both are absolutely a problem, and it takes a lot of arrogance to think that you're above it all.

But there hasn’t been a 60 year vacancy of the Holy See.  Each time a pope died another was elected right away, and he was accepted as Pope by the entire episcopate.  If the last 6 pope had been false popes, the entire episcopate would have been united to a false head, formal apostolic succession would have ended years ago, and the visible Church would have defected. If that were the case, the gates of hell would have prevailed.  So that scenario is definitely false.



Nothing that has taken place in the Church over the past 60 years is contrary to disciplinary infallibility, and it is excessive to say the Magisterium has been leading souls to hell for 60 years.  There’s no doubt that Freemasons, Communists (and worse), began infiltrating the Church hundreds of years ago, and that some had risen to the highest levels of the Church by the end of the 19^th century (e.g., Rampolla). But even today, my local ordinary, in spite of whatever errors or heresies he personally holds, has never taught anything heretical that I’m aware, which would have led the souls in my diocese to hell.  To be clear, I’m not denying that the Church is in a crisis, but what I am saying is it’s excessive to say “the Magisterium has been leading souls to hell for 60 years.”



If, by “the assistance of the Holy Ghost,” ALB is referring to papal infallibility (which is likely), the answer is that this assistance is only guaranteed to prevent a Pope from erring when he defines a doctrine, ex cathedra.  Paul VI never defined an error; therefore the assistance understood in this sense was not contradicted during his papacy.  If ALB was referring to an ordinary assistance, the answer is that the Holy Ghost promises the same to every member of the episcopate, but this ordinary assistance, which is an actual grace, “assists” without preventing the possibility of error, or overriding the free will of the one being assisted.  So, the ordinary assistance would not have prevented Paul VI from overseeing a far-reaching destruction of the Church.

One of the primary reasons Catholics are unable to reconcile the crisis in the Church with Catholic doctrine, is because they have embraced an excessive idea of infallibility - the same excessive notion of infallibility that Cardinal Manning, Dr. Ward, Louis Veuillot, and numerous Jesuits defended in the years before Vatican I. It was this erroneous idea of papal infallibility, which any Catholic with a knowledge of history would have rejected (and did object), that lead to the opposite reaction by Dollinger and the other future Old Catholics. 

The public debate over infallibility in the years prior to Vatican I was between two opposing groups: those who defended an excessive notion of infallibility, and those who rejected it.  If you believed in papal infallibility you were considered to be with the former group; if you rejected the false notion of infallibility that they promoted, you fell in with the latter group.   In other words, the public debate presented two false choices, and with human nature as it is, each side became hardened in their position.    Those who believed in papal infallibility as it would be defined a few years later, were a silent and hesitant minority, who were being tossed back and forth between the two extreme positions.

When Vatican I defined papal infallibility, it did so within narrow conditions that would have likely satisfied both groups before the public debate began.  When the Council finally defined the dogma, however, it was too late.  By then, each side was already for or against papal infallibility, and the narrowly defined conditions did not satisfy those that had been arguing so vehemently against it for years.

The defenders of (the false notion of) infallibility were considered to have triumphed at Vatican I (even though they really didn’t), and most of the other group left the Church. This resulted in the founding of the heretical Old Catholics Church, whose apologists continued to use the same arguments to refute the papal infallibility as they did to refute the “defenders” of the dogma before it was defined.  In other words, the heretics were attacking a straw man, since Vatican I did not define papal infallibility as the “defenders” of the doctrine presented it prior to Vatican I.

But the problems didn’t end there.  The pre-Vatican I “defenders” of papal infallibility didn’t completely abandon the excessive idea of infallibility that they defended before the council. While they didn’t dare reject what Vatican I defined, their tendency was to stretch the infallibility of the pope beyond what was defined.  Just as the liberals reduced the dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” to a “meaningless formula” so as to conform the dogma to what they believed, so too did the pre-Vatican I “defenders” of infallibility reduce the dogma of papal infallibility to a “meaningless formula” by treating every authoritative teaching of the Pope as infallible.

And since the pre-Vatican I “defenders” of papal infallibility were seen as the victors in the debate over infallibility, and since they held some of the highest positions in the Church, the excessive idea of papal infallibility that they continued to promote, was gradually embraced by most Catholics.  Overtime, most Catholics began to believe every word of the Pope was infallible.

The earlier quote you provided from ABL shows that he, too, had embraced the excessive view of Papal Infallibility, but later quotes show he abandoned that error.  For example, here is what he said in 1989:


That’s because the sedevacantists have an entirely false notion of infallibility.  They are the Old Catholics 2.0.  They adhere to a false notion of papal infallibility that cannot be reconciled with the crisis in the Church.  The Old Catholics false understanding of papal infallibility caused them to reject the dogma, and the sedevacantists false understanding of papal infallibility causes them to reject the recent popes.  The result is that the Old Catholics say the Church defected at Vatican I, and the sedevacantists say it defected at Vatican II.  Same heresy, different date.


I don’t arrogantly think “I’m above it all,” but what I do say is that nothing about the crisis causes me any difficulties at all.  And there are certainly no “unanswerable questions” that disturb me.  That is not arrogance, it is the truth.

Well, my personal opinion is that it cannot go on for more than 14 years 6 months 35 days 2 hours 15 minutes and 23.5 seconds.  But some theologians hold that it's 15 minutes and 47.8 seconds.

You might believe in a Church that would fail in its mission if it taught error to the universal Church, but if so, you definitely don’t believe in the Roman Catholic Church, since it has never taught such a thing.

Does the material Church you believe in (not sure what CT refers to) have a hierarchy consisting of validly ordained bishops who received their jurisdiction from a true successor of St. Peter?  If not, this is another confirmation that your “Material Church” is not the true Church founded by Christ, since the Church Christ founded will continue to exist as He constituted and founded it, and He constituted and founded it with a legitimate hierarchy of bishop with authority. 

The true Church also has four marks, one of which (apostolicity) also requires legitimate hierarchy consisting of bishops with jurisdiction – that is, validly ordained bishops with the authority to carry out the mission that Christ entrusted to His Church.  So, if your Material Church doesn’t have a hierarchy of bishops with authority to carry out the mission Christ entrusted to his Church (and they can only receive the authority to carry out that mission from a Pope), then your Church lacks a mark that the true Church will always possess.  This is yet another confirmation that the Material Church you believe in a false Church.

What’s worse, holding to an error of Vatican II, or rejecting the true Church founded by Christ and believing in a false Church (one without four marks)?    Blessed are those today who believe in the true Church AND reject the errors of Vatican II.

You’ll have to explain what your “Material Church” thinks Vatican I defined concerning the Papacy, which contradicts what I wrote, or what ABL wrote (not sure which you're referring to).

There’s a lot to unpack there, but suffice it to say that the Church founded by Christ has never taught that the Pope is unable to err in a magisterial teaching that is addressed to the universal Church.  Perhaps the problem is that you’ve been reading the writings of the Old Catholic heretics, or their post-Conciliar counterparts - the sedevacantist – who say this is what the true Church teaches?  If so, don’t let them fool you.    Heretics always distort the meaning of Catholics dogmas by presenting them in an extreme sense.  They then present their straw man “dogma” before inexperienced Catholics, as if it's the teaching of the Church, and easily refute it, thereby giving the appearance of having refuted what their Church teaches.  This is a tried and true method of heretics. There's always a certain number of Catholics who fall for this trick and end by leaving the Church. Cardinal Franzelin discussed this tactic used by heretics in his celebrated book, On Divine Tradition:

“As the Fathers often explain, whenever Catholic truth stands midway between two opposite errors, heretics always preserve the Catholic dogma only to distort it by presenting it in an extreme sense in one direction or the other.  Then, what the Catholic Church does not in the least teach, is placed in this [distorted] way before the inexperienced, as though it were Catholic dogma, which can then be easily attacked.” (Franzelin, De Divina Traditione)

Why did Franzelin mention this common tactic of heretics?  Because the heretics he was discussing in the book used the same tactic. And who were those heretics?  It was none other than the old Catholic heretics 1.0 – the Neo-Protestants of the 19th century.  Franzelin explains that the way these heretics attacked the dogma of papal infallibility, was through the use of sophisms and specious arguments that had the effect of eliminating the distinction between infallible ex cathedra papal teachings, and non-infallible teachings of the Pope’s ordinary Magisterium, in the hope of convincing Catholics that everything the Pope teaches must now be considered infallible, according to Vatican I.  He writes:

“… no Catholic has ever denied, or can deny the necessity of distinguishing between ex cathedra definitions and other declarations, even doctrinal ones, whether of the Popes themselves or of Pontifical Congregations.  Enemies of the Holy See and those impugning infallibility alone try to eliminate this necessary distinction, which itself is contained in the decree of the Vatican definition, and especially today the Neo-Protestants [i.e., Old Catholics] do the same. (…) the teacher of Neo-Protestantism, Freidrich Schulte, in order to defend heresy and attack the dogma of papal infallibility, chiefly exerted all his strength and constructed sophisms to bring it to pass that the distinction between a definition ex cathedra, and other public docuмents and declarations of the Popes, is hollow, even to the point that all the declarations which the Pope promulgated or promulgates by the force of his pastoral office, in whatever way he does so, must be held as infallible definitions by Catholics after the Vatican Council.” (Franzelin, De Divina Traditione)

It’s surprising how successful this tactic was.  Even though anyone could have read the dogma of papal infallibility for himself and seen right through the lies of these heretics, nevertheless, as usual, there was a certain caliber of ignorant Catholics who fell for it – just as there’s a certain caliber of ignorant Catholic today who has fallen for the identical tactic of the sedevacantist heretics - not to prove the dogma of papal infallibility false, but in an attempt to prove that the subject of the dogma - the Popes - are false..  One difference is that the Old Catholics 2.0 (today’s Sedevacantists) go further than their heretical 19^th century counterparts, by claiming Vatican I also ruled out the possibility that a pope can fall into heresy.  Not surprisingly, the same dupes fall for that one as well.

I’ll respond to the rest of your reply later.